Regeneration
by Slide
Summary: Five years since the Thorn Wars. Five years of peace, five years of rebuilding. But the people they left behind are never truly gone, and past deeds echo louder than mere nightmares. The hardest part of fighting for a new world is finding your place in it. Sequel to the Stygian Trilogy.
1. Whose Woods These Are

**Chapter 1: Whose Woods These Are**

It took a lot of scrubbing to get the blood off her hands. Long hours in triage under the flapping tarpaulin of this makeshift hospital had left them so stained that one spell alone wouldn't clean. By the time Lily Potter ducked out of the stifling shade of the tent, her skin was raw, her fingers aching.

Sunlight was blinding absolution, spots in front of her eyes searing away the images of pain and suffering left behind. A gentle breeze made the heat less stifling. It didn't make the draining dryness or the persistent dust more tolerable, though, and the moment she was back in the ruins of Aguilar, she had to cough.

'Here.' The bottle pressed into her hand was cold, the water refreshing as she drank, drank enough to drown the moans from the tent until she had to cough and choke. A hand clapped her back. 'Yes. Kill yourself with it. That's what I meant. This was all a cunning assassination ploy.'

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. 'Sorry. Thanks.'

Somehow, nothing ruffled Scorpius Malfoy. Even in the searing heat he was tanned, not sweating, golden hair bleached even brighter by the sun. The sleeves of his linen white shirt were rolled up, his sunglasses glinting in the brightness, his smile easy, unconcerned, but not inappropriate. 'You've been in there a while. You alright?'

'I'm a Healer,' Lily said reflexively. 'This is my job.'

'Oh, you see settlements devastated by magical storm _often_ in Saint Mungo's? Or has a Saturday night down the Leaky Cauldron not calmed down at all?'

'A little. Speaking of, are you going to _actually_ return to Britain any time soon?'

'I was going to after the party. Then this happened and Congress called us in and now, here we are. New Mexico.' He gave a mock-sigh. 'Americans. Can't take care of their own crisis.'

'That's the price you pay for being good at what you do,' Lily pointed out. She took a gentler sip of water and turned to the sandstone and shattered timber remains of Aguilar.

It was a small magical settlement in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico. There hadn't been much time to learn about it between getting the deployment notice and grabbing a Portkey, so all Lily had gathered over the last twenty-four hours of travel, set-up, and work was that some strong local magical auras led to curious arcane phenomena. They kept Aguilar's population small, but also drew in scholars and researchers trying to chart these changes, and what they did to the flora and fauna.

What they had _lately_ done was turn a midsummer thunderstorm into a disaster that magical protections hadn't been ready for. It was the sort of once-in-a-century mishap of arcane lightning and winds beyond all comprehension that tore through protections, walls, people, and left the population of a hundred or so witches and wizards with shattered homes and shattered lives.

A freak occurrence like this could be dealt with. But it meant MACUSA didn't have the staff on hand to respond half so quickly as the Methuselah Jones Foundation. The charity had been set up in the War of Thorns, mostly helping magical settlements across the globe with the aftermath of war and other cruel acts of wizard. So Congress called in Scorpius Malfoy and his people, because sometimes an act of God and magic needed the same answers.

'The death toll's at twelve now,' Lily continued once her mouth wasn't as arid as the scrubland around Aguilar, stretching on far across rolling hills. The mountains in the distance, a grubby, deceptive brown, were where the storms had come from, where the tightest weaves of magic knotted. The devastation had ripped the town up, making it look now like it had been lost for fifty years instead of fifty hours, and everywhere she looked locals and charity workers picked through the wreckage, searching for belongings and starting the tidying and rebuilding process. At least they weren't searching for bodies any more. 'Hernando lost the woman who was at the epicentre; her body was just _changing_ and he couldn't stabilise her...'

Scorpius' hand returned to her shoulder, reassuring, comforting. 'That's only one more in the last six hours. The rest?'

'We're out of the worst of it. I think they'll be alright.' A shrug. 'I wouldn't be able to take a break, otherwise.'

'I guess not. You've done good work here.'

Lily drew a deep breath and looked again across Aguilar. 'How's the shelter coming?'

'People have a place to sleep, if they're not shipping out. A lot of those still standing want to help. We can get the rebuilding work done over the next forty-eight hours, though there's nothing to be done for what's been _properly_ lost.' Scorpius clicked his tongue. 'This sort of stuff's Albus' strong point, not mine.'

'Yeah, I thought you just sat at a desk and dealt with boring people and boring paperwork.'

'I like to _elevate_ the boring with my eternal wit and charm.'

'Is that why you let Al take six months' leave without any notice? To keep all of this _exciting_?'

It didn't make much difference to her work if it was Al calling the shots out here or Scorpius. In truth, it was easier with Scorpius; she hadn't worked for him long, but he was less likely to coddle her than Al, more likely to let her get on with her job and trust her to be a responsible adult. But it still wasn't like her big brother to take off without warning.

Or, it wasn't supposed to be like him any _more_.

Scorpius hesitated, and she kept her gaze locked on him. 'I didn't know this crisis was going to happen. He needs the time off.'

'Oh. Great. Can _I_ have six months' paid leave?'

'When you've worked for me for five years and jumped across the world for every bloody project, _sure_ , Omega Potter, you can.'

'No thanks,' she sighed. 'I'd like to have a life instead of ram my face into your work or my family's _every_ mishaps. Is that why you let him go? So he can go _find himself_ instead of sleep-walking through life?'

Scorpius clicked his tongue again. 'Something like that.'

She narrowed her eyes. 'You're up to something. Both of you. There's another one of your _schemes_ -'

He took a step back. 'I am doing nothing wrong -'

'Does Rose know?'

'You make it sound like I'm an untrustworthy fellow, keeping sordid secrets from his beloved wife -'

'That's a _no_.'

'I _would_ have talked to her,' he said defiantly, 'except I had a fancy party in the Caribbean and then the very next morning had to come rushing out here with all you bastards because some mountain blew itself up.'

'So there _is_ something to talk about.'

He stared at her, then folded his arms across his chest. 'I thought the Potter branch of the clan was meant to be the _nice_ bit.'

'No, that's just Al. You do remember Dad's in charge of the Auror department? Mum was famed for her aggressive take-downs on the Quidditch pitch? You've _met_ James?'

'Unfortunately.' He brushed his hair out of his face. 'So you're also absolutely bad news. I'll let the American contingent know; that Castillo looks like she should be warned about you.'

Lily's stomach did a loop-the-loop. 'That's not _fair_.'

His beam was almost bright enough to reflect the sunlight. 'A rough-and-tough American Auror shouldn't underestimate you if you're trouble, and I reckon she's got you pegged as sugar and spice and all things nice - _ow_!' He laughed as she kicked him in the shins, reeling back. 'I can dock your pay, you know!'

'I just pulled an eighteen-hour shift,' Lily warned. 'I have had my arm inside someone _up to my elbow_. I could not be in _less_ of a chirpy Little Potter mood, so don't you dare start teasing me about Auror - who for the record, I haven't even paid attention to!'

'So I'll make sure she knows you're _not_ interested next time she oh-so-casually asks me what your story is when we're checking the perimeter?'

Lily stepped back, glowering. 'I'm too sleepy for this shit,' she muttered, then paused. 'Did she say that?'

Scorpius shrugged. 'I thought you didn't care?'

She waved a cranky hand at him and turned away. 'I'm hitting my bunk. I've had enough of you.'

He laughed as she left, and she felt a little better for it, a little like the long hours in the stifling heat amongst the injured and dying of Aguilar in a makeshift hospital that couldn't do quite enough for any of them were fading away.

Several big tents had been set up on the edge of town for the relief workers. There weren't enough bunks for all of them, but that was less of a problem when everyone worked more hours than they rested. Only two of the beds in the tent she picked were occupied, a Healer colleagues and one of the American Enforcers here to help with security snatching a little sleep. The Enforcer was flat on his back and snoring, and she cursed as she picked a free bunk and took off her boots.

In the end, she passed out more or less the moment her head hit the pillow.

She wasn't sure what woke her. Dusk was gathering outside, so perhaps she was getting colder. Perhaps the pressure in the atmosphere was changing, or perhaps there was only so long she could be this oblivious. It certainly wasn't a sound, because when her eyes fluttered open and she glanced around the bunkroom, she jumped when she saw Auror Castillo in the doorway.

'Shit -'

Castillo raised her hands, grinning apologetically. 'Sorry, Potter. Just stuck my head in lookin' for Stanislavski. Didn't mean to wake you.'

'You didn't.' Lily sat up. A quick glance around showed she was the only person inside, and she rubbed her eyes. 'He was here when I fell asleep. What time is it?'

With a flip of the wrist, Castillo checked her pocket-watch. It shone differently to the silver-plated watches of British wizards; looked simpler, hardier. She suspected titanium. 'Nine. It'll get dark soon.'

'Shit,' Lily hissed again, and stood. 'I've been asleep six hours.'

Castillo arched an eyebrow. She was tall and graceful and, Lily hadn't helped but notice, muscular, comfortable in hard-wearing boots and dragonhide trousers even in this heat and a sleeveless shirt showing off her arms. Lily, for her part, felt like a pint-sized mess of scruffy Healer garb and wild red hair and a freckled complexion threatening to let her burn under the sun. 'What, they don't let Healers _sleep_ in England?'

'I need to get back in the hospital -'

'Most of the rest of you are sleeping in the other tent. Four of you still on duty in hospital, most patients're still unconscious, too. It's waiting time, Potter. Use it to rest.'

Lily ignored her and pulled on her boots. 'You're not resting, you're running around,' she babbled. 'Beating the bounds or patrolling the perimeter or whatever it is you Aurors do -'

'Guarding,' Castillo supplied helpfully.

'Yes, well, I could tell _you_ to get some sleep.' Lily stood, hands on her hips, wild hair she knew not helping her cause. 'And I could order that. As a doctor. Order you into bed.'

The world did not do her the favour of opening up under her and dragging her into hell. So the words decided to, instead, lie fat and heavy between them, leering and looming and enough to send heat flying to her cheeks, doubtless turning her face as red as her hair.

Then Castillo grinned. 'Is that an order, or an offer?'

Which, of course, was when the explosion happened.

It came from the west, a solid _boom_ that made the ground shake, and both of them burst out of the tent in time to see the eruption of energy, dirt and masonry shattering upward from the edge of town. It was the side nearest the mountain, and came with a wave of shouts and screams breaking the first placid evening Aguilar had had since the storm.

Lily stopped and stared, even as stone continued to catapult upward, even as there was a high-pitched _whine_ of more magical energy gathering -

Castillo tackled her to the ground as the next arcane explosion brought with it a wave of energy that rippled across the town, just over their heads, and set all the hairs on the back of her neck upright.

'Stay down!' Gone was the casual, easy-going flirting, and in its place an urgency that would brook no opposition. 'And stay _here_!'

Castillo shoved herself to her feet, wand already in hand, but Lily scrambled up after. 'Stay _here_? People are going to be hurt in that -'

' _You'll_ be hurt in that!'

'I'm a _Healer_!' Lily whipped out her wand. 'That's my job.'

A muscle twitched in the corner of Castillo's jaw, but then she nodded and the two women set off at a run.

The west side, Lily realised with a tightening in the chest, was where they'd put the temporary shelters for Aguilar's healthy survivors, and while it looked like these were buildings being magically exploded, that still meant a lot more innocent people in someone's line of fire.

'What is this?' she panted as they ducked between ruins, as masonry rained down around them and magic energy hummed in the air. 'Another storm?'

'That's a _spell_ ,' Castillo said, leading the way and gaining ground. 'We got company.'

In the end, the Auror _was_ faster than Lily, so she was left behind as Castillo disappeared around a corner and then there was nothing but her, her wand, the blood rushing in her ears, and the sounds of panic and pain drawing closer.

When she got to the edge of town, to the scarred black ground and the blinding dust and the air that hummed with power, it was the fallen she saw first. All still moving, nobody dead, looking like they'd been blasted by an explosion and sent flying, but it was still more than the people of this town needed. She rushed to them, first, a young man not much older than her flat on his back and clutching at a burn along his gut but otherwise paralysed with shock, and instinct took over.

So it was only absently that she realised much else that was going on. Raised voices and spells yelled and the dust settling to show two groups facing off, the MACUSA security forces against others. By the time she'd made it to the third fallen wizard, she looked up to see the Americans weren't getting the best of it. Only Castillo and one other were still on their feet against a half-dozen witches and wizards, all in long robes despite the sweltering heat, magic of curses and shields crackling between them. But even as Lily's heart lunged into her throat, that was when the attackers paused, one stepping forward, wand ready.

'Stand down!' he called out. 'Nobody needs to die here. We take what we want, then we go. You can't win.' His was a deep, rumbling voice, edged with an accent Lily couldn't place, and strong enough to break through the haze and dust and force them all to a halt.

She watched as Castillo shifted her stance, a pure defensive technique she remembered dimly from a Defence NEWT, but all that felt like a very, very long time ago, 'We're here to protect these people! Not surrender!' Castillo yelled.

'Protect them by standing down.'

One of the attackers, at a curt nod, turned their wand to the side blasted at one of the few houses left standing on this side of town. The world again became dust and shrieks as masonry went flying, by sheer chance not striking any of the huddled townsfolk who hadn't had the chance to flee. Lily hurled herself over the wizard she was tending to and threw up a Shield spell to block fist-sized chunks of stone.

'Castillo!' called a new voice from the town, breathless and desperate. 'You heard him! Stand down! We can talk about this!'

Lily's head whipped around to see Scorpius Malfoy sprinting out into the devastation. His wand was in his hand, but as she watched he shifted his grip to a useless one and opened his arms wide as he approached the attackers. Chest heaving, hair wild, he advanced on half a dozen wands locked right on his chest, and gone were any of the easy smiles.

Fading sunlight made floating crystals of the settling dust, casting a glow all around him, but when he spoke there was no more of his flounce and attention grabbing. 'Nobody needs to get hurt any more. What're you after? Money? I can sort out money.'

The wizard who'd yelled at Castillo turned to Scorpius, and Lily saw them both freeze. 'You,' said the wizard, wand not lowering. 'Didn't expect _you_ out here.'

' _Argyris_?' Scorpius' expression twisted. 'What do you want?'

The wizard called Argyris, short and stocky, with almost remarkably unremarkable, plain features, gave a stiff shrug. 'I've got the wands. I don't answer that. You keep your people out the way so I can send someone into town.'

Castillo side-stepped closer to Scorpius, wand levelled on the attackers. 'Mister Malfoy, you should go back inside -'

'No.' Argyris jerked his wand. 'Stay there, Auror.'

Scorpius lifted a hand to Castillo. 'It's alright. It's fine. I know what I'm doing.'

' _Sir_ -'

'He knows this situation better than you,' Argyris agreed. 'We go back some way.'

'Old _friends_ ,' said Scorpius through gritted teeth, not looking away from the attackers. 'So I thought you were better than this, Argyris. Doing over a messed up town for what little money they've got?'

Argyris snorted. 'Give me a little credit, Malfoy. I'm not rising to that bait. He taught us better.'

' _He's_ dead. I thought you and the rest would have the sense to go to ground.'

'You thought that would last forever?' As Scorpius frowned, he continued. 'Step aside. This is the last warning.'

Scorpius, shoulders tense, raised his hands, and did indeed step out of the way to the road leading deeper into the town. 'So long as nobody is hurt, Argyris. Let's be professionals.'

'Nobody will get hurt, so long as someone comes with us.' Argyris nodded to one of his lackeys, and a witch in long, dark robes tromped towards the huddled townsfolk. 'We need a guide and security.'

Lily leaned back, trying to keep her and her patient, some distance away and still flat on the dusty, scorched ground, as unobtrusive as possible. Guilt surged in her alongside the relief when the witch emerged from the crowd dragging a middle-aged wizard by the arm.

That didn't stop Scorpius. 'Hey, Argyris, there's no need for this. You need security? Take me. Everyone here works for me, they won't risk my head -'

Perhaps he just meant to step forward to make a point. Perhaps he'd shifted his grip on his wand, looked like he was making ready to use it. But either rattled or correct, Argyris snapped out his wand, quicker, more ready, and blasted out a spell that hit Scorpius in the chest.

The screaming started again. The spells started flying again, Castillo and the other Auror bursting into action. Argyris' men returned fire, some of the townsfolk started to run while others started to fight, but again the outside world rushed away from Lily.

Maybe this was some dose of useful professionalism, letting her block out distractions so she could act. Maybe it was intentionally stupid, making her ignore dangers as she rushed through a firefight to get to someone injured.

But the spells didn't hit _her_ , the fighters didn't hit _her_ , so it didn't matter; meant she could duck under magic rippling overhead and skid to her knees next to Scorpius Malfoy, plant her hands on his chest, already pumping out healing spells she knew better than, in this chaos and panic, her own name.

Not just because she was a Healer. But because she knew, after all that had been lost and suffered by so many of her family, she couldn't possibly let her cousin's husband and brother's best friend die.

* * *

 _A/N: So. Um. This happened._

 _I know I swore I wouldn't come back to these characters, but then ideas came about, themes and issues I felt I'd not properly put to bed, and I need a bit of break from writing Not Fade Away over NaNo. I don't anticipate this to interfere with its posting schedule, and do not expect this story to be posted at a similar rate to past Stygian stories._

 _This is a continuation of the characters whose stories needed finishing, of the themes which were not resolved, of the questions which were left unanswered. Because sometimes not answering questions is just a cop-out. Obviously this picks up very shortly after Oblivion's epilogue, and will continue from there. Do not assume this will deal with every single character Stygian handled; some are very much done. But evidently there will be some new focuses, too - just see the introduction of Lily as a more significant figure._

 _Also the Cursed Child upset me in some ways and it drove me to finish this damned first chapter off._

 _So, some day, onward! Back to old friends and fun times._


	2. There Are Only Middles

**Chapter 2: There Are Only Middles**

A thousand miles away, Al Potter's life had taken a hard swerve left. Some moments it felt like a thousand years ago, too; others, merely heartbeats gone. His head still hummed with the madness of it, such that he could walk down a sun-soaked street in Cape Town and close his eyes and think himself again on that dusky beach in the Caribbean.

The sounds of the party had rushed away behind him, jubilation and politics washed into the sea for all he could care. An evening breeze tugged at the fading warmth of the day as he crossed the sand thick enough to keep his gait slow, as if he needed more reason to hesitate. The silhouette had turned before he was halfway there, for so long just an outline he still recognised from the other side of the beach. But by the time he was twenty metres away he could see her face, and it was all he could do to not break into a run.

Last he'd seen her, she'd been boarding a train for a meeting to decide her future. Or their future, as it truly was; they'd stopped pretending her freedom and her fate wouldn't affect them both, but their paths had pulled them apart then, sent him to the far side of the world. He'd kissed her and said he'd see her in a few days once it was over, assured her he believed in her, and then let her go and never seen her again. They'd both had their other loyalties, him to Scorpius and her to what she felt was right.

For five years he'd dreamt of this moment, of finding her again, but now it was here and as Al walked up to Eva, all he could think was to say, 'Do you want a drink?' and offer her one of Scorpius' ridiculous cocktails-in-a-coconut.

Time had changed her, changed them both. Her hair was longer, tied back in a tight braid and midnight-black enough to fight the sunset's efforts to reach it. Now he looked at a leaner face, but behind the sharpness was a more measured gaze, observing but less detached, less condemning, and even after all this time he could see the apprehension in her eyes as she watched him.

He was, he knew, softer. His was a demanding lifestyle, but not one of life and death. Weeks spent in the back of beyond had seen him grow out a short beard, though it itched in the heat and now he was out of Russia he'd considered shaving it off. He couldn't imagine how he looked to her, because he wasn't sure how he looked to himself these days.

She drew a deep breath, and took the coconut. 'Thanks.'

Together they turned to the sea as the sun tried to drown itself in the horizon. _A thousand things to say, and I have no idea where to start_. 'Were you here long?' he asked at last.

There was the slightest furrow of her brow. On her it might have been apprehension of small-talk, or consternation at the world's end. 'My Portkey only just got in. I came down to wait - Scorpius suggested -'

She stopped herself, and he felt his unbidden smile rise. 'He told me to come out here. It's alright. So, you two... planned this?'

'I ran into him in South Africa a few weeks ago. Your organisation's work down there crossed paths with Roux, I happened to be there at the time...'

His throat tightened. 'So it's only chance you're here.' _So you've not decided to come back. Scorpius badgered you into it -_

'It's - he - I don't know,' Eva admitted. 'I've been doing work, important work, and it's not over yet. But Scorpius and I talked, and he mentioned the party, and we thought - _I_ thought...'

He turned to face her, shoulders tense. 'That you'd come to check in, and then walk away again?'

'I didn't want to make any assumptions. I don't know what happens next.'

He'd barely had any of these drinks, but already his head was spinning. Slamming back the entire coconut cocktail didn't help, but it gave him something to do with his hands, as did throwing the coconut into the sea. 'Then let me know when you _do_ know.'

Voices screamed in his head when he turned away, but it still felt safer, easier. Staying meant finding out what he thought and wanted, meant scrambling for words even when they might not be the right ones, even when he might not _want_ the right thing. Pulling away was safer, because he knew where that road led. He'd been walking it for years.

But he'd barely got two steps before Eva spoke, voice as tight and desperate as he could remember - and he remembered her voice every night. 'If I can get this job done, Roux thinks he can make the Assembly give me amnesty.' He stopped, heard the shudder in her breath, felt her walk over beside him. 'Maybe I should have waited until it was done, until I had something concrete - maybe this wasn't fair to you, to me, to anyone - but I had the chance, and I...'

Al froze, fear and frustration bubbling away for shame, and he turned to face her. 'I'm sorry,' he told her shoulder, because that was easier than meeting her gaze. 'This wasn't how I imagined this going.'

The corners of her eyes crinkled with ardent apprehension. 'How did you imagine it?'

'Without final tasks,' he admitted. 'Or politics. I always imagined it actually... over.'

'I'm sorry. There isn't a lot to go, but I can't pretend I know what will happen.'

'Then what's left?'

'I've been working with the South African government off the books the last year. There's a new smuggling network shipping stolen magical artifacts between countries. The thieves or rogue curse-breakers are usually locals, but the smugglers have a broader setup. So Judge Roux's been backing a task force down there for tackling them, but I can help work across borders.'

'Artifacts?'

'Usually just old relics, things collectors are interested in. Nothing serious.'

 _Nothing like the Chalice_. There'd been a fresh burst of tension in his gut at that thought, one which made him all of a sudden very, very weary. The relief was palpable. 'So what else do you need to do?'

'Not much. There's a debriefing in Cape Town in a few days, talking to the future Assembly committee who'll be taking this on. If it's not a hand-over, it'll be making the road map for one. Once the GWA is properly established, they'll have the coordination to fight international groups like this.'

'And then it's over for you.'

She hesitated. 'Depending on what the GWA decides to do with me.'

 _So here we are again_. 'Then you... we...' He stopped, swallowed the stumbling words, and tried again. 'I don't want to distract from this,' he said, though it wasn't really what he'd meant to say.

'You don't _distract_. But we should talk. More. Properly.' She shifted, hesitated - then blurted, 'Come with me to Cape Town. If that's what you want -'

'It is,' he said in a rush. 'If I won't be in the way, I don't want to be -'

'You won't, and having you there might help -'

'If you're sure -'

'I'm sure,' she said, and finally sounded like she stood on solid ground as she turned to him. 'It's just a few days.'

 _A few days. And then what?_

He'd know soon enough. They'd travelled to Cape Town together, not a short process in a wizarding world controlling transport wherever possible, paranoid in the echoes of the Thorn War. Eva had explained how much she'd come to rely on Muggle transportation in the past five years, seen as a wanted criminal by many magical governments, now moving freely only because of paper signed by the redoubtable Judge Roux.

But they'd parted ways on arrival, her whisked away to see the man himself and prepare for the debriefing, and him left to wander the city. He had not wanted to stay in the Department of Magic. Memories of the Thornweaver incursion were too strong; of Inferi stalking the corridors, of his own brush with death, of Eva...

This was not how he had expected their reunion to go. With peace or with fire; those were the only two options he had imagined. Not this half-life, of one fraught conversation followed by the turgid roll of bureaucracy. There had been no privacy in their travels, and he had barely seen her in the days since their arrival.

So he'd walked the streets, soaked in the city, both magic and Muggle. So he'd done as he'd done these past five years: filled his time watching people, or reading, and pretending to be perfectly fulfilled. Except now his blood hummed in his veins and his heart thudded in his chest, and Albus Potter had to accept that, even locked in apprehension, he felt more alive than he had in years.

It was at last, at least, the day of the debriefing, and while he would not be allowed to witness as a mere civilian, Eva had directed him to the nearest lobby. She had not _asked_ him to wait, but he remembered enough of her way to read between the lines. It suited him fine. He had not dared ask if she wanted him there at the beginning, and at the end.

Despite his best efforts, it was difficult to ignore the memories which echoed along his footsteps in the front lobby of the Department of Magic. Sunlight still streamed down through the great, domed window, the frame casting crisscrossing shadows across the floor. He'd been thrown to the ground by Erik Geiger _there_ , and the Thornweaver who'd taken _his_ Invisibility Cloak had slipped into the shadows _there_ , and Eva had been stabbed _there_ -

He rode the lift down with fist and jaw clenched tight, and the sight of Eva when the doors opened to the lobby of the International Relations Division almost didn't ease him. It was almost too easy to imagine they were again trapped in that crucible.

For once, she seemed more at ease than him - but then, she must have spent time here these past five years. There was only a smattering of witches and wizards in the lobby, looking as if they'd come from the four corners of the world, and she extracted herself from a conversation with a tall law enforcement officer to approach.

'This keeps getting delayed,' she said by way of explanation and apology. 'It should have been yesterday, but the Americans _still_ aren't here. Some crisis. Apparently they're inbound, and should be here within the hour...'

'It's alright,' he said, not sure if he imagined the air of tension around her, not sure if he _wanted_ to see her fraught and apprehensive at the sight of him. He knew he was fraught and apprehensive at the sight of _her_. 'I don't mind waiting. And better waiting here than in the city.'

Eva nodded, looking back at the waiting crowd. 'This shouldn't take long. It's only a debriefing. A hand-over meeting.'

 _And maybe a meeting where they decide your whole future._ 'I'll - we should talk. Tonight.' He didn't know if it was boorish to assume she would be _able_ to talk. 'I don't know. Maybe over dinner.'

A hint of tension at her shoulders loosened. 'You'll have to figure out where. I don't know Cape Town.'

'You've been here _years_.'

'On and off, and there weren't exactly dinner dates in my life.'

'I should have got an apartment, not a hotel, so I could have cooked,' Al found himself blurting.

'Then we'll just have to do that another night.'

Again he felt light-headed, drunk on nerves and apprehension and the sheer _thought_ of her. 'I'll hold you to that.'

Guilt tugged at her expression, but then the lift doors slid open behind Albus and a trio of witches and wizards stomped out. The lead witch was older, grizzled, scowling, and the moment she opened her mouth Al guessed this was the delayed American delegation. '...Portkey system in southern Africa really _sucks_ ,' she growled. 'We're here. Not all of us. Rest are coming, held up as they had to come through Austin. They'll catch up. We going to get this started?'

A rumble ran through the lobby, and Al smothered his smirk as the Americans acted like everyone waiting was the cause for delay, not their tardiness. Eva rolled her eyes out of their line of sight, but reached to touch his arm with tense apprehension. 'I'll - it'll -'

'It'll take as long as it takes,' he said with a small smile, 'and I'll be here.'

He saw her breath catch in her throat, watched her drop her gaze. 'Thank you.'

Then she left with the rest, heading out of the lobby and into a large meeting chamber. Leaving him alone with only the echoes of their footsteps and the last time he'd been in this building, and the apprehension of how his world would be changed forever when she came back through those doors.

§

Last night, she'd dreamt the falling dream again. Icy winds rushing past her, stealing her breath even as the shattered rocks below promised to steal her life. But you couldn't steal what was freely given, and she'd _chosen_ this, hadn't she; taken Raskoph and all his evil in her hands and hurled them both into the abyss.

She hadn't dreamt the dream in months. Maybe a year. Perhaps she was getting better, perhaps the echoes of the past had fallen silent with time, with the wedding, with the promise of a future. Perhaps she had just been too busy, too tired to dream of days gone by. And then she'd woken up to the black-winged owl sent by her husband's company to tell her he was in hospital.

'Try to not murder the receptionist, Weasley.' Selena didn't break step with Rose as she stormed down the corridors of the Cabot Salvation Hospital, hidden deep in the stone of the Coloradan Rocky Mountains. 'It's not her fault.'

'Not her fault, what, that even in an _emergency_ it's taken me the better part of twelve hours to get here by Portkey? When the _damned things_ allow instantaneous travel and the Ministry's _brimming_ with them, and it only takes them _twenty minutes_ to charm one for its destination?'

'All true, but still not her fault.' Selena had met her in Saint Augustine, the old Florida city their first point of arrival on the US mainland. There'd been no warning, no prior message; Rose had just emerged into the umpteenth waiting lounge to find her old friend sat there with a stack of magazines and a serene expression. From there, internal travel had been much faster, though as foreign nationals MACUSA had subjected them to no end of scrutiny. 'You could almost say it's ours; if we hadn't foiled my mother we'd probably have a united magical global government by now, complete with freedom of movement.'

Rose's jaw tightened. 'That's not funny.'

'I'm serious.' Selena reached for her arm as they hurried up the next flight of stairs. 'Rose. Breathe. Lily's letter said he was alright. She wouldn't have lied.'

Rose didn't break her stride. 'But that was hours ago, and anything could have happened since then.'

'Sure; flying monkeys could have whisked him away, or perhaps ninjas broke into the ward overnight and even the receptionist doesn't know -'

'This is _not funny_.'

Selena harrumphed as they turned through another set of doors. 'You used to like my jokes.'

'I was young, stupid. Desperate.'

'We're arguably still all of these things.'

Rose ignored her. They were on the right floor now, and she could see the cluster of witches and wizards in the next lobby, some of which she dimly recognised as working for the Methuselah Jones Foundation or families thereof. The air was all tense silence and begrudging impatience and stale coffee, the sound of murmured efforts at comfort bouncing off pale walls with their peeling paint. The metal double doors beyond were manned, though, by a pair of tall wizards in uniforms of American law enforcement, and one of them raised a hand as she approached.

'Sorry, ma'am; staff only past this point.'

Rose straightened, and looked him in the eye. 'The injured from Aguilar are inside?'

'Being seen to, ma'am; a doctor will be with you shortly.'

'Ma'am,' she repeated softly, and glanced over her shoulder at Selena. 'When did I become a _ma'am_? I'm not even twenty-five.'

Selena let out a slow breath. 'Hoo, boy, good luck,' she told the Enforcer.

'I know this is a difficult time,' he said, 'but -'

'But _what_? But some superior of yours said nobody's to get past this point for _security_ reasons?'

'Those are my orders, and I'm sorry -'

'You're not,' Rose snapped. 'So stop saying it. I'm going in, because my _husband_ is inside. You have no more right to be here, this _rag-tag_ security setup dragged in from across the country; no more right to be here than me.'

'Ma'am, this is a perfectly professional -'

'You're all dragged in from _nowhere_ to stand at doors; you don't have a damned clue. _You're_ wearing the insignia for the Boston Patrollers and _he's_ got an award badge from the south border guard unit. And I know this because _your_ bosses seek _my_ opinion every time they build a new secure facility or want existing wards reinforced. You don't want to upset your superiors? You should worry about upsetting _me_ ; my name is Rose Weasley and I ended the Lethe Scourge, I killed the Dark Lord Raskoph, and my security clearance with world governments is high enough that I can get you reassigned to the middle of nowhere in _Newfoundland_ for the rest of your miserable careers if you don't let me in to see my husband!'

Somewhere down the line, everyone in the waiting lounge had fallen quiet. The two Enforcers stared at her with mixtures of shock and apprehension, in the distance a door slammed shut, and Selena leaned in. 'I hate to, like, ruin the moment,' she murmured, 'but they're Yanks and Newfoundland is in Canada -'

The Enforcer she'd not been talking to pulled out a clipboard and offered it. 'If you sign in, Ms Weasley, I'm sure we can square it with our boss later, as it's someone with your security credentials.' Rose snatched the pen and scribbled quickly, but when he offered the clipboard to Selena seemingly out of panic, Selena laughed.

'Oh, sweetie, no.' She smiled wistfully. 'My name shows up on that clipboard and forget Newfoundland, you'll end up in _Greenland_.' Selena squeezed Rose's arm. 'I'll be out here, drinking bad coffee.'

Rose nodded, turned for the doors - then hesitated and looked back. 'Thank you.'

Selena shrugged. 'I was in the neighbourhood,' she said simply, as if a thousand mile trip just to keep her company was nothing.

But this couldn't wait, and Rose hurried into the secure wards. The lighting was gloomy, but the walls better painted. Through the doors to side-rooms she could hear moans, hushed voices, saw Healers hurrying back and forth, guards posted at several doors, and she had no idea where she was going until she turned a corner and saw her cousin sat huddled on a bench outside a private room.

'Rose!' Lily lunged to her feet and fair flew down the corridor, thudding into her to wrap her arms around her. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I sent the letter as soon as I -'

Rose could only return the hug in a brief, perfunctory manner, before pulling back and grabbing Lily by the elbows. 'Where is he? _How_ is he?'

Lily was pale, face smeared with blood and reddish-brown dirt, hair tied back in that strict, no-nonsense way Rose would never have associated with one of her youngest cousins before the surprise revelation that she wanted to be a Healer, not an Obliviator. Right then, tired and dirty, she looked younger, like a child caught playing in the flower patch at the end of the garden. 'He's in that room there, and he's going to be _okay_ ; he took a slashing curse to the gut but they managed to cleanse the dark magic and stop the bleeding -'

'What _happened_?'

Lily bit her lip. 'Aguilar was attacked, some band of thieves - I don't know, Rose, you'd have to ask the security -'

'I mean, how did it happen to _Scorpius_?' Her chest was tight, throat seizing up with apprehension and anger, and the worst thing of all was that this - the sizzling panic, the numbing inside as she fought fear with feeling nothing at all, every sensation that said her world threatened to slip through her fingertips - was achingly, agonisingly familiar.

'He - they wanted hostages and Scorpius put himself in the way, but Rose, the leader, he _knew_ him. Said they went back a way.'

Rose's jaw tightened. 'Who was he?'

'I don't - I don't know -'

For a moment, Rose wanted to shout - grab Lily tighter shake her, scream at her, demand how she could _not know_ , how she could be so inattentive in a life-or-death situation to not pick up on every detail, remember every fact, demand how she could _let this happen_ -

But then someone else stepped up, a tall witch in a dragonhide jacket Rose didn't recognise, who put a hand on Lily's shoulder. 'If your cousin hadn't got to Mr Malfoy when she did, the curse would have caused way more internal injuries before being cleansed -'

'I _know_ what dark magic curses do,' said Rose, and the scars on her abdomen from Elijah Downing's curse seven and a half years ago throbbed. But the interruption still stopped the howling in her ears, and her hands slid to Lily's grasping comfortingly instead of accusingly. 'Thank you.'

Lily let out a slow breath, and nodded to the other woman. 'This is Auror Castillo, she was on the security detail and helped drive the attackers off...'

 _Not soon enough_ , Rose thought, looking at the tall Auror, and instead just said, 'Thank you,' again.

Castillo gave a small nod. 'I should be going. Got a meeting in Cape Town I'm already late for. They're only so understanding out there.' She squeezed Lily's shoulder before letting go, and Rose wondered if she was supposed to pick up on this, or the hint of a blush on Lily's cheeks. Then she wondered if she was supposed to care. 'I'll write you. Miss Potter, Mrs Malfoy.'

'Don't call me that,' Rose mumbled, but if Castillo heard, she didn't correct herself as she left. 'How come they let _you_ in here?' she asked Lily once the doors shut.

Lily grimaced. 'I was pretty much clamped on to him to stop the bleeding; they didn't have much choice and didn't argue once they realised I was a Healer.' She let go of Rose's hands. 'You should go. If he's not awake, he will be soon enough. I'll get you -'

'I'll be fine,' said Rose, and went into the room.

It smelled tart and floral, like someone had covered it in disinfectant then tried to disguise the scent, and the result was something uncomfortably mixed. But it was not the first medical ward Rose had been into, though she'd hoped it would never happen again.

Scorpius was propped up on a bed under blankets, perhaps quieter and stiller than she'd ever seen him, and this was enough to make Rose's breath catch in her throat. He looked smaller now, shrunken in the big room with the big bed, though she knew he was only looking his actual size. Not the boisterous figure bursting into a room and owning his space, demanding all eyes on him, controlling everything even beyond arm's reach.

She wanted to linger there, wait at the door and watch him – watch the rise and fall of his chest, feel the serenity of the room, because Lily had been right: he was, after all, going to be alright. But that was just the physicality. Other wounds went deeper. Older wounds went deepest.

Then his eyes flickered open as she tried shutting the door quietly, and the moment was lost as he gave her that sleepy, silly half-smile she could see right through. 'You're late.'

Rose fought to keep a straight face as she went to his bedside. 'International traffic's a killer right now, darling.'

'I've been languishing here _hours_ ,' he groaned, flopping back on the pillows. 'With shitty hospital food and this ugly décor and only Lily and her crush for company –'

But she couldn't keep up the deflection any more, and with a swallowed sob Rose snatched for his hand. 'What _happened_?'

She saw the flicker at the corner of his jaw, saw him consider deflecting with humour. Then that old knot returned to his brow, so rare these days, and it was like watching ancient burdens settle again at his shoulders. 'Turns out Aguilar's such an ancient wizarding settlement that some opportunistic bastards thought the disaster was a time to sack it for old treasures.'

'Old –'

'Some old stone tablets, genuinely just _historical_ crap only someone like Doyle would care about.' His assurance was quick. 'But they were ready to rough up and even kill for it.'

'And you got in the way.'

Scorpius' gaze drifted to the ceiling. 'They were starting on the townsfolk – those guys had been through enough –'

'Lily already told me you knew the leader.' She felt him tense, and raised her other hand to his brow, pushed hair out of his face and kept close.

'Yeah.' He sighed. 'Argyris. Niko Argyris. He was – some of the others might have been, there were hoods and I only got a good look at him – and I'm not really _sure_ …'

'He was one of Thane's people,' Rose finished, feeling her chest tighten. 'You worked with him, when – after –'

'After I came back through the Veil. Yes.' He only barely met her gaze. 'I swear, I didn't think I'd see those guys again.'

'Only, what, _two_ were arrested after the war?'

'They went to ground after we brought in Thane in Saint Annard. Well, after _you_ brought in Thane in Saint Annard. Perhaps they were waiting for whatever came next in Lillian and Thane's plan – they had to be in on it, or at least prepared to follow Thane's word blindly enough to be on his side. But I suppose the plan didn't account for the Battle of Niemandhorn. So they stayed underground.'

'And you told the authorities everything when you were in New York.' Her hand at his cheek tensed, stopping him from looking away. 'You cooperated _fully_ to try to get them brought in?'

His eyes widened. 'Of course I did – are you asking if I _covered_ for them? They're brutes and crooks.'

 _And you worked with them for eight months, my love, and you have never lacked for loyalty. You were even, in a way, loyal to Thane_. ' _I_ don't think you covered for them,' said Rose quickly. 'But if this Argyris is resurfacing, and you think there might be others, the last thing we need is for anyone to be suspicious of you.'

Scorpius flumped back down, expression twisting. 'I didn't consider that,' he admitted with a groan. 'But I reckon you're over-thinking, love. Argyris wasn't the worst, and maybe I'm imagining things, wondering if any of the others were with him in Aguilar. Memory's a bit blurry. Someone like him was going to resurface some day.'

'You're right,' said Rose, not feeling at all reassured. But her gut had good reasons right then to jump at shadows, and especially the shadows of the past, so she tried to assuage the tensions in them both by squeezing her husband's hand. 'Are you _really_ alright?'

A smirk tugged at the corner of his lip. 'Now she asks.'

'Scorpius, don't tease –' But emotion had risen in her throat, choking again, and she could feel the threat of tears. So long had it been since she'd felt like this; five long years without that particular surge of adrenaline, that particular taste of bitter fear in her mouth, and now it was back like an unwelcome guest.

'Hey, don't – I'm _okay_ ,' he insisted, eyes widening with horrified concern, his hand coming up to her cheek and thumbing away the threatening tears. 'It was a nasty blast and yeah, I got myself in trouble, but Lily was on me right away, the Healers here are great, and a couple more days and I'll be _fine_ …'

'But you don't get to _do_ this to me again,' she said, voice shaking. 'I _can't_ do it again, I can't do waking up to find an owl telling me you've been hurt, I can't do the last twelve hours being _sick_ with terror that something's happened to you; it's over, the war's over, and I _won't_ do this –'

He was supposed to be the one in need of comfort, but it was Scorpius who sat up, Scorpius who wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, Scorpius who whispered comforting nonsense as finally she broke and sobbed into his shoulder.

'I'm sorry,' he mumbled at last as she got a grip on a smattering of control. 'I never want to hurt you like this again, scare you like this again. Hell, _I_ don't want to be shot again, it's rubbish.'

'I'm sorry, too – you're the one who's been hurt, I shouldn't, this shouldn't be about me…'

'I'm pretty sure,' whispered Scorpius, pulling back enough to rest his forehead against hers, 'that last year we made some sort of promise where nothing's about just one of us, it's about _both_ of us…'

She gave a weak nod, brushing her nose against his, forcing her breathing to slow. 'You're right. Have the Aurors properly taken your statement?'

'Yeah. I was a bit high, so they might do it again.' He held her hand tight as she finally pulled up the stool to perch by the bed. 'If it's anything more than sheer coincidence that Argyris attacked the town I was at, it's news to me. Hell, under normal circumstances it would have been Al he ran into.'

'Have you heard from Albus?'

'Just that he's headed for Cape Town, or should be there by now. GWA business there, something Eva's still wrapped up in. You'd be more in the loop than me.'

Rose shrugged. 'I've been up to my eyeballs in the new meeting chambers' security warding; the company's not had me worrying about _people_ or international crime in months. I'll send out some feelers.' She winced. 'If Argyris was one of Thane's people, and Eva's out there…'

'She might know something. I – I don't know what she's up to, I really don't, but I'll send word if I can.' He met her gaze cautiously. 'And that's all I'm going to do. I promise, unless someone specifically needs something I specifically know…'

'Then this isn't our job.' She swallowed down fresh bitterness, and wasn't sure of this particular flavour. Did she resent the world for dragging her back into danger, even a little? Did she resent the instincts which looked at danger on the horizon and refused to saddle up? 'We can observe. Make sure nothing takes us by surprise. Warn Al and Selena.'

'Al needs a _break_ ,' Scorpius groaned. 'I'd say _we_ need a break, but we just _had_ a holiday.'

'Your fundraisers aren't holidays, dear.'

'Then maybe we'll do that,' said Scorpius, brightening a little. 'Once I'm out of here.'

He looked like he meant it, sounded like he meant it, and so she just smiled and squeezed his hand. 'And you can practice your dodging.' Because it was easier to pretend they would both go away quietly if there was another lost disciple of Prometheus Thane prowling the shadows of the world, and if there was a thing they could do to stop him.


	3. The Secret Sits

**Chapter 3: The Secret Sits**

'Thank you all for coming.' The deep, melodious voice of Judge Roux boomed around the conference chamber. Down the end of his table, slipped between two bureaucrats, Eva tried to look inconspicuous, nothing more than part of the furniture.

'Next month will be the official founding of the Global Wizarding Alliance's Security Council,' Roux pressed on. 'This will be a committee with the legal power to manage and investigate criminal elements which cross borders and jurisdictions. Some of you here will sit this council, which is why you've been invited: to be fully briefed on an international crime syndicate.

'The Red Manticores are an organisation that's sprung up in the last five years, but mostly risen to prominence over the last twelve months. We believe they've exploited some of the power vacuum in petty crime and minor wands-for-hire left in the wake of the Council of Thorns, and the lack of organised, cooperative, international response from the law enforcement community with the dissolution of the IMC. Their interests specifically are in the acquisition, smuggling, and sale of relics of magical power and magical historical interest; again, spiked by the destruction of the Council of Thorns and their own interest in acquiring such artifacts.'

Eva didn't recognise many of the people in the big, round chamber. She knew the South African teams; Roux's office and the couple of South African Enforcers who had worked the more legitimate ends of these investigations. The rest were either bureaucrats destined for the GWA or law enforcers who'd been hunting the Red Manticores' operations in other corners of the globe. She could tell which group was which, though, because the law enforcers looked bored and the bureaucrats pushed their heads together to mutter at Roux's words.

'No reports have indicated the Manticores are gathering relics for any purpose but financial gain. While some of the objects they have acquired do indeed possess magical power, the vast majority are of interest to scholars and collectors and researchers. Tablets of Delphi, secret scrolls of the Vedas, Merovingian tapestries. Our concern is not about some wider plan, but the risk they present to the wider community. Thefts have resulted in serious injury and loss of life, as have smuggling operations. When confronted with opposition, by civilians or law enforcement, the Manticores have proven themselves prepared to use force, including lethal force.'

Roux shuffled through some more papers. 'Finally, I've referred to the Manticores as a whole. In truth, we suspect the actual Red Manticores themselves to number around a dozen witches and wizards, seasoned in working together. They often hire local gangs and local muscle for their thefts and smuggling. The core of the Manticores themselves stay on the move and often don't show their faces directly. This makes it all the more imperative the GWA Security Council is fully informed on this; taking down the Manticores is absolutely going to take the use of local law enforcers with local knowledge.'

A middle-aged wizard from the Brazilian contingent with sleepy eyes leaned forward. By his attire and manner, Eva assumed him one of the GWA's future bureaucrats. 'Judge Roux, do we have the identity of any of these Red Manticores, then? I've got in front of me piles of reports of local thefts involving local gangs and, yes, references to them passing stolen goods on to a higher, central group. But very little on the witches and wizards of the Red Manticores themselves.'

Roux grimaced apologetically. 'I should have made it clear, Mister Navarro; I'm chairing this meeting because my department happens to be playing hosts. This is the first time law enforcement groups from across the world have seriously sat down together to discuss this; our hands have been tied by the legislation passed by many world governments protecting their own sovereignty in the wake of the dissolution of the IMC. My people conducting investigations in South Africa have only had run-ins with a local crime organisation who've been stealing and smuggling goods out of the country on behalf of the Red Manticores.'

The grizzled witch from America, who'd arrived late and not seemed to care, stood at that. 'Then I guess it's time we started putting cards on the table, those of us who've ID'd Red Manticores, huh?'

Roux, always so poised and polite and collected and hating it when anyone was anything but that, looked at the witch with barely a flutter of the eyelashes in complaint. 'By all means, Secretary Dawson.'

'South Africa might have only had local gangs to deal with. MACUSA has had local gangs _and_ the Red Manticores themselves, or some of them.' Dawson flipped a file open and waved her wand at the contents. Instantly an image sprung up above her head, a magic projection of the pictures before her for the whole room to see.

And Eva's heart lodged itself square in her throat.

'Leofric Tackleton, Gisila Faust, and Niko Argyris have been identified and confirmed by my people as ringleaders amongst the Red Manticores. Argyris in particular surfaced only a matter of days ago, attacking a village with hired muscle in New Mexico and making off with local relics. These three are professional criminals with a shared history; they've run together for a long time in a gang we thought dissolved at the end of the Thorn War. Other members of this gang have gone unaccounted for, and might well be Red Manticores; unfortunately, they might also be dead. But it's quite a start.' Dawson waved a hand at the door. 'One of the reasons I was late was we were waiting on the Auror with the most experience of this gang, who happened to be on the ground in New Mexico. She's headed over directly from that investigation and has only just arrived; can I interrupt the proceedings by bringing her in?'

Roux waved a hand in assent, and as Eva watched his face she saw he didn't recognise the three names, didn't know what hell was about to fall down on his head. But she couldn't worry about that; her eyes snapped to the door, not knowing what hell was about to fall down on _her_ head.

Then the doors swung open and a witch not much older than Eva, still in dusty dragonskin trousers and heavy, non-uniform boots and a beat up leather jacket stomped into the conference room, and the last shred of hope that had sparked in Eva's stomach fizzled out. _You_.

Auror Castillo had to have seen her. Had to have recognised her. But she walked up to the MACUSA desk without reacting, gaze fixed all the more on the images of Tackleton, Faust, and Argyris.

'I'd apologise for being tardy, but this was a goddamn pertinent delay,' said Castillo, and jabbed a finger at Argyris. 'These three are definite ringleaders. They've been part of the same crime syndicate for fifteen years. It was involved in the overthrow of the Peruvian government, the dissident uprisings in Saudi Arabia, the kidnapping of Enriqua Deliz. Later, this was the exact team who conducted what we now believe to be the test run of the Stygian plagues at Hogwarts School in Britain, and who served _directly_ under Joachim Raskoph, in the hunt for the Chalice of Emrys, and onward in the Thorn Wars. They reputedly went rogue from the Council of Thorns in the final year of the conflict, killing and sabotaging their former allies. We believe now this was because their leader had all along been an ally of Lillian Rourke.'

Eva dragged her gaze from Castillo to watch Roux. To watch his brow knot, his throat tighten; to watch him fight against an instinct of looking at her, because anyone who knew who she was had to know how truly terrible this was going to get.

'Their leader, of course, was Prometheus Thane, arrested in the final months of the war and killed in his attempted escape at the Battle of Niemandhorn,' Castillo said. Then, with the matter-of-fact aplomb Eva had learnt to expect, she walked around the desk, perched on the edge of it, and looked straight at Eva. 'So I'm wondering why the fuck we have Prometheus Thane's pet sat right in this room like she's one of us.'

Of course Castillo had set it up like this. Of course Castillo had clocked her the moment she walked in, and of course she hadn't exploded on sight. She'd built this up, stacked the deck, built her case, and brought it crashing down only once she was ready. It was the kind of vicious thoroughness that Eva had learnt to respect, fear, and loathe when Castillo had hunted her almost eight years ago.

Thankfully, there was enough confusion that the hubbub was bewildered and shocked, not yet outraged, which meant Roux had the chance to get to his feet and raise his hands. 'Eva Saida has been working for this office to _fight_ the operations of the Red Manticores for the last eighteen months –'

'Eva Saida,' said Castillo coolly, 'is wanted on four counts of murder by MACUSA. One of these charges includes the murder of a law enforcement officer. And I couldn't off the top of my head tell you how many criminal charges other countries could level at her.'

 _Roux could,_ Eva thought glumly, and fought to keep her expression flat. The judge was glaring by now, which she didn't like much at all. Roux almost always kept his cool, and Eva wasn't sure what would happen if he was provoked. 'Miss Saida,' he continued in a rumbling voice, 'was also offered a pardon after saving the lives of thirty-two officials of SADOM in the Thorn War, successfully evacuating them from _this building –_ '

'A pardon offered by the _disgraced_ IMC, a pardon which was never finalised before the Battle of Niemandhorn,' Castillo countered with a dismissive shrug. 'She then went on the _run_ before Niemandhorn was secured again. And I know what you'll say next, Judge: that she worked for Balthazar Vadimas for two years before that, fighting against the Council, that she worked for the British MOM –'

The Brazilian bureaucrat who'd spoken earlier, Navarro, stood. 'This is clearly a deep issue; can we have Saida taken into custody so we can get back to the issue of the Red Manticores?'

Fear of capture, incarceration, _punishment_ were not new to Eva. What was new was the level of bubbling panic that rose in her throat, how much she had to fight the instinct to push out of her chair and fight her way to the door. _No, not now. No, no, I'm so close, so close_ –

'We _cannot_ ,' boomed Judge Roux. 'Miss Saida is under contractual agreement with SADOM and I will not have her arrested; nor will I have South Africa's sovereignty infringed on by any _visitors_ trying to take matters into their own –'

'Then for heaven's sake, Roux, get her out of this meeting,' said Navarro, instantly bored. 'You and MACUSA and anyone else can do twenty goddamn rounds over extradition _later_.'

'I believe Miss Saida could be of _great use_ if we're fighting an organisation headed by her _former_ teammates –'

To Eva's relief, something sparked in Navarro's eyes. 'Probably. But that's an operational detail we'll hammer out later. Get her out of here before MACUSA busts a gut.'

Finally Eva saw a flash of anything but chilly control from Castillo. 'Respectfully,' the American Auror growled, 'I'm busting a gut over a murderer and kidnapper –'

'This isn't the place to get sanctimonious; Saida's a minor operator and we make deals with her ilk all the time.'

Navarro's dismissive tone gave Eva little comfort as, at Roux's gesture, a SADOM Enforcer escorted her to the door. He was right; her deal with Roux and SADOM was the sort law enforcement agencies made all the time, enlisting minor threats to bring down bigger ones. But the extent of shelter she'd received from SADOM, her freedom of operation, were both unorthodox.

And if the likes of Navarro didn't care enough to condemn her, they wouldn't care enough to risk pissing off MACUSA by fighting _for_ her.

She felt no relief at the sight of Al, waiting outside for her in the lobby. Only guilt as the door slammed shut behind her, a guilt to choke her in waves of bitter bile. _I should have refused Scorpius. I should have waited._

But he was looking at her, brow furrowed with that expectant concern she knew so well. _Something's wrong; just tell me what it is, I can help –_

 _You can't –_

She was running through the conversation before it even happened, and that was enough to set her head spinning so badly she almost turned and fled down the corridors. But that was childish madness. Instead, she crossed the lobby to him, expression set, and said in a flat voice, 'You should leave.'

'What's –'

'You saw that witch who just walked in, the late arrival trying _way_ too hard to be intimidating in a lot of leather?' Somehow it was easier to mock Castillo; it made her seem like a poser instead of a dangerously talented Auror with a well-earned grudge.

'Yes, but what's –'

'About eighteen months before I met you, Thane had us running magical drugs out Peru and into the US to fund the dissident movement we were backing. One run went bad, and the Aurors got involved. I killed one of them, which was the _fourth_ murder I'd committed on American soil. That Auror's partner was set on the case to bring down Thane's team, and fixated especially on me and my past crimes. That Auror's partner is the witch who just walked in that door.'

Al's jaw tightened. 'I'm not leaving just because you have enemies.'

'She's about to be very important,' Eva said, like he'd not even spoken, the light-headedness dizzying by now. 'Because she's one of the closest things to an expert on Thane's old team still around, and probably the foremost who didn't get hung up on Thane himself. And that smuggling ring I told you about? Is _led_ by the dregs of Thane's old team.' _Because of course they didn't find some old hole to die in, of course Argyris is leading operations himself, of course Faust is still making her deals, of course Tackleton's coming up with a big picture and fancying himself Prometheus' heir_ …

That did make Al falter – but then he rallied, straightening with a deep breath. 'So this mission's not over. Because _you're_ a foremost expert on them, aren't you, so Judge Roux is going to need you –'

'Judge Roux is fighting a battle to not get me _locked up_. Castillo is going to gun for me, and I don't know what clout she has in her office. I don't know if she can make MACUSA demand my extradition, and I don't know if Roux has the clout to stop SADOM from giving me over just to make the Americans shut up.'

'So we go to _our_ contacts,' Al snapped. 'Rose is a senior member of an international security firm, Scorpius has friends all over from the charity –'

'No,' said Eva, and somehow she must have found enough strength to make that one word stop him short. 'No, I'm not doing this again. I'm sorry, Al. I was wrong. I was wrong to come back to you, I was wrong to ask you to come with me, I was wrong to think it was over. It's not over, and I am not – I am _not_ – dragging you into this darkness in my life again. Because I'm not sure if I can win this, and I'm not doing this just out of kindness to _you_. But if I'm going to be sent down, I can't do that with you –' Her words were starting to tumble over one another, so she clenched her fists by her side, drove her fingernails into her palms for the fresh sting to return control. 'I can't have my life end with you, with everything I could have had with you, close enough to touch. _That_ will kill me, Al.'

At last he had no answer, staring at her with a mixture of crestfallen loss, shock, and such dawning horror that she couldn't bring herself to watch come to fruition. But it meant he didn't stop her as she pulled past him, headed for the depths of the corridors of the SADOM office, not even knowing where she was going yet but away, away, _away_.

Even though everything behind her would follow soon enough.

§

St. Mungo's bureaucracy hadn't improved over the years, so Rose was late to her meeting. White Wands International enjoyed spacious premises in a tall office building in Canary Wharf, guarded by all manner of expensive enchantments to stand like a sentinel amongst the Muggle towers and yet be obscured from all their vision. It meant Rose was treated to a fine view from the windows of the boardroom when she hurried in: the Thames stretched out lazily in late spring sun, the financial heart of Muggle London glittering like its value was still counted in gold, her boss glaring at her from the head of the table.

Rose was not accustomed to being on the back foot in this job, and still she mumbled her apologies and slid into her seat like she was back at Hogwarts and late for Transfiguration lessons. It took her some time before she could bring herself to bury the file from St. Mungo's underneath her work documentation, and even longer before she could focus on the meeting.

It went by in one blurry hour, all the details of the GWA's new headquarters in New York and the security wards White Wands were designing – that _she_ was designing – memorised by her weeks ago. Even when she had to speak she could rattle it off without really thinking, though her eyes were dull and tone distracted.

But she got everything right, so when the meeting was over and everyone else had hurried back to their desks, her boss closed the door and turned to her. 'Everything alright?'

'Yes, sorry.' She blinked back distraction. 'Didn't I tell you I had an appointment at the hospital?'

Marius Smedley's gaze went from tense to concerned. 'You didn't. Is everything alright?'

Rose stood, stacking her files. 'I'm just hoping we've not wasted a year's work with this project.'

Smedley frowned. He didn't much look like a former Enforcer, or especially a Chief Executive; he looked more like he'd wandered out of a back alley behind a pub cracking skulls, with a sloping forehead and craggy, weathered features and an accent straight from south London. 'Wasted? This project's going to be up to spec come the Secretary-General's assessment next week.'

'I know _we'll_ deliver good enough work. Excellent work. I just wonder how long anyone will need it.'

'Still doubting the GWA's going to last?'

She shrugged. 'It started out about trade, renegotiating old agreements from before the Thorn Wars. But already they're slapping together a Security Council, already they're talking about multilateral law enforcement operations.'

Smedley tried a light, joking smile that didn't fit his face at all. 'What, worried if they do too well they'll put us out of a job?'

'No, if they do well we'll be fat off government contracts for ten, twenty years. I'm _worried_ the GWA's going too fast.' She held her files to herself like a shield. 'I'm worried someone will balk, think it's too much oversight, too much infringement on national sovereignty, too much like _Rourke_ again, and then it'll all fall apart.'

'We've come a long way in five years,' said Smedley. 'Sure. Governments are still paranoid of each other, not working together so easy, not handing over an inch of their own power or letting anyone else stomp around in their jurisdiction. Extraditions are at an all-time low, and all any two-bit crook needs to do is jump a border and ain't nobody can come look for him. But it's getting better. It's healing. It's caution now, not blind panic that any cooperation will mean another Rourke Conspiracy.'

'I know,' sighed Rose. 'And I like that it's changing, don't get me wrong. I like that it's getting better, because this paranoia was stupid.'

'Stupid.' He snorted. 'Woman takes down Lillian Rourke herself and _she_ says fear of it happening again's stupid.'

Rose didn't bother pointing out that _she_ hadn't been the one to take down Lillian Rourke. 'Maybe I shouldn't complain. White Wands wouldn't be where it is if they'd just held hands and got on with it.'

Smedley had started the company right out of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, two years before the Thorn Wars. He'd made a fortune, and his company's name, by White Wands never being suspected of infiltration by the Council of Thorns _or_ the Rourke Conspiracy. And in the aftermath, when countries hadn't dared turn to one another, into the void between borders had stepped companies like his, moving between nations and jurisdictions wherever they were paid. A wizarding nation wouldn't want to ask another government for their specialist help with a problem. They _would_ pay foreign wizards who used to work for those governments.

'We wouldn't,' he said. 'But don't worry. The GWA will get it together. And I bet they'll find those bastards who roughed up your husband, alright? So stop sticking the weight of the world on your shoulders like that's the real problem.'

It was, perhaps, easier to worry about politics on the other side of the world than concerns closer to home. 'I still say this every week.'

'I know; for someone who blew the Conspiracy open, you sometimes sound like you wish it had succeeded.'

Smedley knew her history and was bad enough with words that she stopped herself from reading any implications into his comment. 'You're right. I do wish it had succeeded – but not at that cost, and not headed by Lillian.'

'Just make sure you don't say that to anyone in the GWA, alright?' He stabbed a finger at the door. 'The meeting's over, your plans are good to be sent to New York, and you've been out of the office too much the last few days to jump into any of the final projects last second. You've had a hell of a week, Rose. Go home.'

She didn't know how to argue with Smedley when he sounded decisive like that, though she'd hoped to avoid this fate. It wasn't that she didn't want to go home; Scorpius had been released yesterday and immediately caught a company Portkey to London. She had just been planning on delaying this a little.

So she wasted as much time as she could, tidying her desk, putting files away securely, checking in with the rest of the office. But they were all up to their eyeballs in work and she could see Smedley giving her pointed looks, and within ten minutes she was in the Apparition lounge and leaving.

She and Scorpius had lived in the flat he'd bought at the end of the Thorn Wars for four and a half years now, the large, sprawling top-floor apartment in the converted warehouse just around the corner from Diagon Alley. With summer clawing its way into England, the wide windows streamed light and warmth onto wooden floorboards underfoot and solid metal beams overhead, and Gwydion lay sprawled on a sofa cushion in the sunshine. There was no sign of her husband.

'Scorpius?'

A clatter from the kitchen betrayed his location, and he came stumbling out, wild-haired, still in pyjamas, clutching a cup of tea. 'You're back early.'

' _You're_ supposed to be resting.'

'I needed tea.' He pointed at the sofa. 'And Gwydion stole my resting spot. Bloody cat.'

Rose sighed and stalked across to the sofa, scooping the grey-and-black tabby out from soothing slumber and into her arms. He made a noise of sleepy protest and wriggled, but she didn't let him go. 'Sit.'

'I was going to, I just wanted a cuppa…'

'If you move around too much, the internal lacerations might _reopen_ and then you'll be bleeding on the inside and we won't know –'

'Rose! I made a _cup of tea,_ I didn't run a marathon.' Still, he flopped onto the sofa, ganglier in his injury. 'How was the office?'

She waved an indifferent hand and Gwydion rubbed his face under her chin, purring. He was always object at first to being picked up, but once in her arms would settle and demand more fuss. 'The project will be finished on schedule, so the GWA can move in long enough to implode.'

Scorpius frowned. 'Since when were you so fatalistic about the GWA?'

'Don't, Scorp, honestly, I got this from Smedley.' She sighed, and began to pace. 'We don't need security issues like _international smugglers_ right now, the Security Council is going to be brand new without complicated issues of hunting people who move and operate across jurisdictions –'

He was watching her with that level gaze, eyes greyer than blue whenever he was quiet and thoughtful instead of bright and loud. 'That's not what's bothering you,' he interrupted, and her breath caught in her throat, but then he continued. 'I don't think Niko Argyris was coming for _me_ , Rose. I don't think this is some old vengeance thing, I don't think Thane's old mob _care_. If this ring's been around for months and this is the first I've heard of them, then I think I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. After all, if I hadn't given time off to Al, _he_ would have been there and nobody would be any the wiser.' She let out a small sigh of relief, then tensed as he frowned. 'Al. Shit. We should get word to him.'

'Why…?'

'Because Niko might not care about _me_ ,' said Scorpius, sitting up, and in everything fizzing through her mind right then she almost didn't notice him referring to the man who'd sliced him up with dark magic by his _first_ name, 'but you know who they'll care about? The traitor Eva Saida, the person who _killed_ Thane. You know, the one Al's with right now.'

'And where are they?'

He hesitated. 'I don't know.'

'Scorp, it's just been a few days,' said Rose. 'Argyris and these smugglers have been around a little while. Al and Eva can stay out of trouble for that long.'

'You're right,' said Scorpius, and with a groan he leant back on the sofa and closed his eyes. Then, long moments later, he opened them again, looked right at her, and said, 'So what _is_ wrong?'

'What?'

'You're _still_ pacing,' he pointed out.

'It's just – I'm worried about Al,' Rose lied.

' _You_ just told me he's probably alright.' Carefully he sat up, gaze softening. 'I'm alright, I promise. The Healers said I'd be fine if I take it easy, Lily's offered to pop round tomorrow to check up on me _herself_ – I think she's chasing a raise and maybe some advice on her little crush – and if there is _any_ indication that Argyris is interested in me, you know law enforcement will offer protection because that might mean he'll come out of the woodwork –'

He spoke on, but she didn't hear him. Turned her face away to fuss over Gwydion, to let Scorpius' words be washed away by the cat's insistent purrs, by the echoes racing in her mind and the panic that had settled in her gut since her St. Mungo's appointment.

She truly, sincerely considered lying. The lie would be easy; they hadn't faced true danger, life-or-death danger, since the Thorn Wars, since Niemandhorn, and her fear when she'd heard of the attack had strained something very old and very tired inside her. She could claim to still be fraught, claim that she'd thought they'd never go back to those ways, those dark times, and all of this would be true.

But it was not _the_ truth.

 _We said we were past keeping secrets from each other_.

So she turned to him, let Gwydion drop to the ground, and cut him off with the simple words of, 'I'm pregnant.'

They had been married for a year. Together for five years, known each other for thirteen, and Rose didn't think she'd ever seen Scorpius Malfoy so truly speechless. But now he stared, jaw literally dropped, and she held her breath without realising it, unable to even predict his reaction.

She should have guessed the first part, though, where he eventually worked his jaw, tried to speak, sputtered and finally managed, 'What – you're sure?'

'Suspected for about a week now,' Rose told a spot inches above his head. 'I booked a St. Mungo's appointment. Which was this morning. I didn't want to say anything until I was sure, not with the charity ball, and then New Mexico happened and it _really_ didn't seem to be the time. But I've seen a Healer. We're sure.'

'Since – but – how –'

'Potions aren't _perfect_ , Scorpius,' she sighed. This part wasn't hard, this was where he babbled the same questions she had this morning and she recited the same answers she'd been given. 'And I don't _think_ I messed up the routine taking them but I have been busy, and so have you, and – and I guess we're just unlucky.'

 _Unlucky_. The word hung in the air between them, the first _opinion_ to make it to the table after all the facts, and while Rose hadn't meant for it to slip out like that, she couldn't bring herself to scrabble to bring it back. She swallowed hard. 'I know we haven't really talked about a family – I mean, we've just always been saying "not yet"…'

Scorpius had hunched over, hands clasped before him, staring at the floor. Gwydion wound himself between his legs, oblivious to the tension, and mewled. 'I didn't know if you wanted children.'

'I knew you were apprehensive, so I didn't…' Her voice trailed off, and she cursed herself silently for not finding the words.

But he found a thousand in her silence, and suddenly he wasn't slumped on the sofa but jumping to his feet. 'You didn't what? Didn't even talk about this because you thought you knew what I wanted?'

'No,' lied Rose. 'I thought we had _time_.'

'So I might change my mind in a few more years?' He looked away and gave a short, empty laugh, running a hand through his hair and leaving it more wild than even sleep had. 'In a few more years I might suddenly _not_ have had an arsehole father and a negligent mother and…'

 _This_ , she thought suddenly. _This is exactly why we didn't talk about it_. But it was here now, and she crossed the distance to catch his hand, stop his wild gesturing. 'You _aren't them_ , Scorpius. You wouldn't be a parent like them, you're not _like them_ , we've been through this –'

'Right. Through this.' He yanked his hand free. 'You told me this a hundred times and still I'm silly, overreacting Scorpius –'

'That's not what I said.' But her words were tired, because she'd played through this turn in the conversation in her head a dozen times that afternoon, and in no scenario had this ended well. 'I know this is sudden, and _I_ don't know how I feel about this, and you don't have to, either, Scorp. We've got time…'

Again he ran a hand through his hair, breathing rattling, gaze flickering back and forth as he looked at nothing and she knew he was running through memories, torments. This conversation would, she suspected, have gone a lot better had it not been for Thane's team rearing their heads from dusty history so recently. 'Time. Yeah. And you're –' Now his eyes landed on hers, and a hint of blue crept back in. That alone made her gut ease, because she'd never tell him how much he reminded her of his father when his eyes looked so cold. But he was gentler now, cautious. 'You're alright? Everything's alright and healthy and –'

Now it was his turn to catch her hand, and she felt a shudder in her next breath as the tension in place since that morning wavered at his softness. 'Everything's fine and healthy and I have more appointments. There's not much to _know_ yet, but I'm alright. I promise.'

'Merlin,' he breathed, shoulders dropping, but now he moved closer to slip his arms around her. 'We've still got that fantastic sense of timing, don't we.'

And she could let him hold her, let the tension flow from her body and collapse in his arms, abandon all the rigid plans of _what_ to say and _how_ to say it and how to handle it that had raced through her mind since before she'd had confirmation.

But even now, in her husband's embrace, with his knee-jerk tension pushed aside for the moment, Rose could still feel that iron-tight control born of apprehension and fear deep inside her refuse to waver, refuse to go away.

And she knew it was the same for him.

§

The Red Manticores didn't meet in a cave, or a gloomy abandoned warehouse, or a dingy bar. Leofric Tackleton would never stand for anything so disreputable or, suspected Niko Argyris, so cliché. Argyris couldn't agree with the expense of renting this penthouse apartment in Venice, rich with the fall of golden sunshine and the smells of the canals and human sweat through the tall windows, but he knew the rest would enjoy the creature comforts too much to argue.

For his part, the luxury chafed like clothing made for another man, and so it was with a brusque gait that he entered the room, sat down in front of Faust and Tackleton, and put the bag on the table. 'The tablets.'

Faust uncrossed long, elegant legs, and sat up to flip the bag open and peer inside. 'So they are.'

Tackleton was looking at the dusty bag on the probably-antique coffee table like it offended him, and with a grunt Argyris dragged it to the floor. 'We hear you had some trouble.'

'No more than expected. The mercs handled the Aurors. It wasn't a problem. They didn't demand more money or the like.'

'I don't mean with the local muscle, or the law enforcement.' Leofric Tackleton exuded the kind of polished, privileged air of British wizardry that always made Argyris' knuckles itch. While Faust indolently rifled through the expedition's findings, making occasional noises of approval, he was still staring through his over-long lashes at Argyris like dirt on his shoe. Nobody could have accused Tackleton of looking the part of international criminal; tall and gangly, brown hair styled for a floppy fringe, favouring expensive robes instead of the practical, Argyris had never thought him more than a useless fop. But it was Tackleton who'd brought him in, Tackleton who'd returned him to the fold. 'I mean our mutual friend.'

'He means Malfoy,' Faust supplied unnecessarily. She was an American, all fast, inner-city flash and quick words, the fixer, the social chameleon. While Argyris liked her more, he knew she made an effort to be _liked_ more, because that made it easier for her to manipulate. Out here she was poised and fashionable, blonde hair tied back in the sun and heat, oversized sunglasses propped on her forehead in a way Argyris found pretentious.

It didn't matter. He wasn't there for them.

'Malfoy's not a problem,' said Argyris. 'I put him in the hospital. Didn't kill him, or that'd cause a hell of an uproar. But he'll be out of action.'

Tackleton clicked his tongue. 'You should have known he'd be there.'

Argyris shrugged. 'Why? He's not usually on his expeditions. What's the problem?'

'The problem is if encountering _you_ makes him all the more interested in _us_. Unfinished business and all that.'

'He's not seen us in five years. The boy's shown _no_ interest in coming for us, not even when the war was done. We went one way and he went the other. And so what if he does? He runs a fucking charity. We're being hunted by the world's law enforcement. I know which I'm more fucking worried about.'

'I really don't think you should take this so lightly, Niko –'

'Maybe not.' Argyris sniffed. 'But I don't _work_ for you, _Leofric_.' They were not, he thought, on first name terms unless trying to get a rise out of each other.

'Boys, boys.' Faust raised a hand. 'Don't fight. After all, it's pay-day.' She zipped the bag up. 'And the longer you two sit here and argue, the longer it takes for this little baby to get into the buyer's hands and the payload to get in ours.'

With a sigh, Tackleton stood. He reminded Argyris of his little brother when he did that, an insolent teenager about to throw a tantrum over the unfairness of the world. 'Then I suppose that's my cue to be off, isn't it.'

Argyris leaned back on his chair and pulled out a cigarette. He didn't smoke much, but he enjoyed doing it to piss off Tackleton. 'Where's the meeting?'

'DR Congo. And I'm not telling you more than that –'

'Afraid I'd sell you out in a flat minute if I got caught?' Argyris smirked around his cigarette. 'I hope you'll let the boss do the talking.'

' _Do_ try to not fall in the canal while I'm gone, Niko,' groaned Tackleton, and that was all the farewell they got as he waltzed out the apartment with the duffel bag.

Argyris took his time with the cigarette when he was gone. After all, there was less point to it now, and he looked at Faust. 'What crawled up his arse and died while I was gone?'

Gisila Faust gave an unconvincing shrug. 'He's rattled by the Malfoy news. And he has a point. We don't want people from the old days sniffing around.'

He shook his head, and stood to wander across the luxury apartment to the view of the Grand Canal stretching back and forth. Somehow, he missed the cramped industrial districts he'd stuck in his trans-Atlantic hop by illegal Portkey. 'Malfoy's not a problem. You worry too much, Gisila. We're going to make a fortune on this job.' Argyris took a drag of the cigarette, the taste more welcome than the air smelling of foreign indulgence. 'After all, how couldn't we? We're all together again.'

* * *

 _A/N: Sorry it's taken so long for an update! I had a holiday, then my term started up again, and I've been trying to get back on top of Not Fade Away. Regeneration is definitely a secondary project, I'm sorry to say; I'd hope for an update a month, but certainly much sooner than this last update took._

 _Still, I'm thrilled to see the responses of people happy for the story to continue. I'm hoping to do it justice. With those clamouring for Al and Eva to get back together, I've good news and bad news. The bad news is that they've been apart five years, and there's a lot of baggage; nothing's going to happen immediately. The good news is that I have no intention of their story just being a mirror of Oblivion's, of them working together under awkward sexual tension until something snaps in the third act._

 _But we shall see!_


	4. Is the Deed Ever Really Done

**Chapter 4: Is the Deed Ever Really Done**

'You don't have to do this.'

Eva buckled up the webbing that would keep everything she'd need in the field secure and close to hand. A wand and pack of rations could take her far, but in unknown territory she preferred the redundancy of mundane equipment. 'These maps had best be up to date. I don't fancy getting lost in a jungle for days.'

Judge Roux frowned as he watched her check and double-check her gear. They were stood in the Portkey chamber, foreboding grey walls containing and binding the magical energies for powerful international travel, and the tension of them both filled it enough to make the air rumble. 'I mean it, Eva –'

'Then who _does_ do this?' She arched an eyebrow at him as she tightened the webbing across her shoulder. 'DRC? There's a reason the Manticores are having this meeting there; they've probably bribed half the law enforcement. Nigeria or the US or Brazil have the manpower, but how do they explain sending agents into foreign territory? Remember why you use me, sir. I'm _deniable_.'

'You were meant to have done your last mission for me.'

'That was before the Red Manticores turned out to be _old friends_.' Her jaw set. 'I know them. The only good news is that Loganach and Downing are dead, so they've lost their smartest and their most vicious.' _And, of course, they_ _'ve lost Prometheus_. 'Besides, the moment I leave your protection, Castillo's going to be all over me.'

'I didn't know she'd be at that meeting. She's a minor MACUSA Auror –'

'I wouldn't expect you to know her.' She'd made many enemies over the years, and a young, green American shouldn't have been one to stick with her. But Castillo had been one of the rising stars of US law enforcement, brilliant and dedicated and had learnt early on to loathe Eva. They'd played cat and mouse for the better part of a year before Prometheus had them leave the US. In the grand scheme of things, Castillo had not been the worst she'd faced. But everyone else had hunted Prometheus, wanted to stop her to get to Prometheus.

With Castillo, it had been personal.

'If I left now,' Eva continued, 'all I could do is go on the run again since she's caught my scent. This needs seeing through and I'm safer working for you.'

'You're not safer,' said Roux, 'marching into the Congolese jungle alone.'

'Then how about some backup?'

Eva's head snapped around as the door opened and Al walked in, pack slung over his shoulder. 'What're you doing here?'

'Catching up while the good Judge delayed you.' Al gave Roux a polite nod. 'Thank you.'

She narrowed her eyes and looked between them. 'You can't be serious. Either of you. He's not –'

'As you said, you're deniable,' said Roux. 'If two private citizens want to go for a hike in the jungle, that has nothing to do with me. Do try to take some good pictures while you're out there.' He smirked, shrugged, and left.

Eva rounded on Al. 'You can't be serious. This isn't your fight.'

'Judge Roux said this wasn't going to _be_ a fight. Just that sources had leaked news of a meeting between the Red Manticores and a buyer for the package they stole in New Mexico in the Congolese jungle, and that the mission is purely a fact-finding one. Do not engage.' He hefted his pack. 'I happen to know what I'm doing in a jungle.'

'I thought I was clear before –'

'That it'll be too hard for you to get close to me, only to risk losing you?' He stepped forward, voice low and firm. 'That'll be a cakewalk for me, too. Except if we're together, I can do what I can to _protect_ you from MACUSA. And more than that, _you_ came back to _me_ , even before you knew for sure it was safe. You walked back into my life, Eva. That's on you. You don't get to pick me up when you fancy it and drop me when it gets too hard. _You_ chose to leave after Niemandhorn, _you_ chose to come back a few days ago, and _you_ _'re_ trying to make the decision again. Tough. It's my turn. And I'm going with you.'

There was a low rumble as the Portkey ring, sat on its plinth in the small chamber, rattled with the buzz of magical energy, and she scowled. 'That's our window.' There was only a narrow period where they could safely transport into DR Congo without being picked up by any of the magical government's protections.

'Then let's go.'

The world swirled and spun when they grabbed the Portkey, reality twisting in and out and stringing them across the hundreds of miles in the blink of an eye. But it wasn't the travel itself that was hard on body and mind; it was the transition, going from an underground stone chamber to the jungle. One moment all was gloomy and cold; the next she was hit with a wave of humid warmth enough to stifle her breath and make a sweat break out on the back of her neck in a heartbeat. Echoes were replaced with the chirruping of insects and small creatures, the creak of the swaying of trees and branches; musty scents with the smell of green, green life and plants and everything.

Albus, next to her, took a slow, deep breath and for all they were in a hostile environment that could get them lost and killed without ever seeing an enemy, looked much more at ease. 'So what's the plan?'

It was, she realised, too late to argue. She hefted the metal ring of the Portkey and reached for her pack to unsling the extendable shovel. 'We have to bury this to keep it hidden. We have twenty-four hours until it activates for the return journey, when the security window's open. If we move it, we lose the connection with Cape Town.'

'The risks of clandestine operations,' he drawled, and helped her shift the undergrowth to one side to dig. 'So why is this mission only surveillance?'

'Politics,' grunted Eva, slamming the shovel into the root-ridden dirt. 'Nobody can send a proper force in to arrest them. So we find out what we can and use it for next time.' They buried the ring in silence from then on, and she slung the shovel as she straightened. 'Come on. We've a four-hour hike, and that's assuming I can find a decent animal trail along the way.'

She did not, at least, have to take the full precautions of jungle movement. If they were hunting or being hunted, secrecy won over fast movement, and sometimes on past expeditions she'd made barely five hundred yards' progress in a day. That took moving every single bit of the wilderness delicately out of the way and then putting it back how she found it. That took navigating by the contours of the land when maps gave only a view of the tree canopy, of rivers whose location shifted over time. That took using smell and sound over sight to know her surroundings, where washing meant the whiff of soap or toothpaste to give her away.

Instead, she could use her blade to cut away the worst of the undergrowth and so long as they stuck to animal trails and her spells could make sure they didn't veer in their course heading, they were making good progress for where intel said the rendezvous point was.

'So,' said Al, breathing heavy after an hour's rough travel, 'are you going to explain?'

There were too many possible responses to that. 'About what?'

'The Red Manticores. Thane's old gang. I don't know them.'

'You fought some of them. Portugal, Ager Sanguinis the second time.' She stepped gingerly over a patch of thick undergrowth she knew would entangle her boot rather than let her rip through it. 'Not that there was time for introductions. But Pro – Thane. He kept more around him than me and Downing.'

'I wouldn't want to press you,' came his voice from behind her, delicate, 'but it might be pertinent.'

She sighed. 'It could be worse. His best are dead.' _Or me_. 'Leofric Tackleton is an entitled overgrown schoolboy who followed Thane from Hogwarts, a few years younger than him. He always had delusions of grandeur and was never as smart or important as he thought he was, but he was useful when we wanted to give ourselves an air of respectability.' It was uncomfortable how comfortable the ' _we_ ' came. 'Gisila Faust was our fixer, the one with the contacts, the one who helped us get jobs and helped us shift goods. She's good, but her skillset is very particular. You might not have seen her in the field. Niko Argyris – I'm not surprised he's the one who went to New Mexico. He's a follower more than a leader, he likes being hands-on, and he's probably the most dangerous of them in a fight, but he's not particularly imaginative. _Or_ particularly malicious. I'd call him dumb muscle but he's the least unpleasant. Honestly, they're all pretty second-string compared to Downing or Loganach.'

'Loganach?'

'Griogair Loganach. Now, he really _was_ Prometheus' right-hand man, the one who'd be trusted with the most important operations Prometheus didn't handle himself. You won't have seen him; he was team leader in our operations while everyone else was at Hogwarts and running other missions during the Chalice hunt. But he was killed by Australian Enforcers about eighteen months ago. I can only imagine the Red Manticores are the gang's last-ditch effort with most of their best and brightest gone.'

'Last-ditch effort for what?'

'What international mercenaries always want once they're sated on life experiences: enough money to retire in comfort forever.' It was not, she thought, what she'd wanted. But she'd been nineteen when she met Albus, and wanted nothing more than to survive and obey Prometheus, please Prometheus. The likes of Loganach and Argyris, older men who cared about squeezing as much wealth out of as much risk, had been even more alien to her than the brutish Downing. At least she'd understood his splashes of malice.

They were at an awkward descent through the undergrowth by then, grabbing vines to steady themselves on slippery footing down a steep slope, and Albus didn't speak again until they reached the bottom. 'You thought they'd already done that?'

'I thought they'd split up without Prometheus.' Pretending she wouldn't call him by his first name was feeling churlish, like it made Albus' eyes burn through her back and see through her dissembling. It was strange how, even after so long, he could swipe aside her evasions that had become again as natural as breathing. 'There must be good money in the Red Manticore business. It's the only way I can see them being brought together again.'

'You know you don't need to shoulder them as a burden –'

Her breath caught in her throat. 'This isn't about taking responsibility, Al. I don't give a _damn_ about them. I'm doing this because this kind of covert activity is exactly what I've been paid to do the last five years, the kind of work I've been doing that keeps me safe and out of jail. And if I stop doing it now, not only will it look suspicious as hell, it'll leave me vulnerable at the _exact_ moment I've caught the attention of people who don't _want_ to forgive me.'

'You mean Castillo.' He caught up, a shadow at her side to make the warmth of the jungle less stifling. 'Roux isn't going to let you be taken down by one American with a grudge. _I_ won't let you be –'

'First, Al, you can't _stop_ anyone from doing anything,' Eva snapped before she could stop herself. 'Second, even if you could, who you're calling an American with a grudge is a law enforcement officer whose partner I killed during her pursuit of me for _other murders_. Murders I have yet to see trial for, receive judgement for, be punished for.'

He wilted, but his jaw tightened after a moment. 'We've been over this.'

'And over it, and over it. The people I've helped don't make the people I've killed less dead. I'm not about to turn myself in, but don't kid yourself, Al. Castillo isn't a loon with a vendetta.' She pushed past him, continued on the troop through the sea of green she was mostly sure led to their destination. 'She's the reason I left five years ago. She's what I've tried to stay one step ahead of all this time. She's judgement day.'

§

Wrought-iron gates creaked like the wails of the dead as Scorpius set foot onto the grounds of Malfoy Manor. And he knew exactly what the wails of the dead sounded like. One step broke the air further, the crunch of gravel left undisturbed for years under his boot, but still he was so tense that the _crack_ from behind him had him spin, wand raised, injuries across his ribs screaming in protest as muscles stretched.

Selena blinked as the first thing she saw upon Apparition was his wand-tip in her face. 'Well, hello to you, too.'

He lowered his wand and scowled. 'What're you doing here?'

The countryside breeze tugged at strands of her gold hair, and she straightened it with customary aplomb. 'Rose sent me.'

'I told Rose I was going to the office…'

'It's almost as ifyour _wife_ can tell when you're lying.' Selena sighed. 'For the record, I have no bloody clue what's going on, but Rose clearly still needed me in the country and she's worried about you over something she can't intervene on herself. I get the impression she'd have _much_ rather sent Albus after you, but he's God-knows-where, so you get me telling you to get over yourself.'

His gut coiled as he slid his wand up his sleeve. 'I do not need the patented Selena Rourke "you're being very stupid" blunt lecture.'

' _Please_. Lecture would suggest it's longer than those four words. Also, experience tells me otherwise. Not to mention you've come _here_.'

Scorpius turned back to the looming grey walls of Malfoy Manor. Between them and the locked doors and shuttered windows were the overgrown lawns and hedgerows, the fountain left to go dry for an age. He didn't know if it was less welcoming like this; after all, when it was in good order it meant his father was there. 'I don't expect you to understand.'

She followed him anyway. 'Complicated feelings about family? About parents who have done all sorts of things and still demonstrated their affection in their own, messed up ways? _No_ , Scorpius, I can't _imagine_ what that's like,' said the daughter of Lillian Rourke. But her voice softened as she said, 'is he up for parole?'

Despite having come to his family home, he hadn't let himself think about how Draco himself would fit into all of this. 'No, it's not about that. I wanted to take a look.'

'Scorpius, you hated this place even _before_ your father was complicit in a plot to take over the world which caused the deaths of hundreds, thousands of innocent people. You did not just _pop by_.'

'Maybe,' he snapped, 'I don't want to _talk_ about it.'

'I considered that,' said Selena, 'and then decided that's probably you being stubborn and stupid.'

But she didn't say anything else as they reached the doors, and Scorpius drew his wand to mutter the specific incantations needed to unlock them. 'Expect dust,' he warned. 'Harley gave up the place ages ago and Rigby's not been maintaining it.' It had taken some time to get the family House Elf to accept work anywhere else, time that had tested Harley's patience as much as Scorpius'. Now he worked maintenance in Rose's offices, which wasn't exactly the _best_ progress, but earning a fair wage under the half-blood part of the family was better than nothing.

The doors creaked open to reveal an interior shrouded in shadows for mere heartbeats before magic kicked in, the sconces along the walls bursting into flames to cast skittering darkness about the deepest corners of the halls of Malfoy Manor. Selena wrinkled her nose. 'I bet this place was super cosy when people lived here. Great place to raise children.'

It seemed an innocent comment, so he fought to keep the flinch from his face. Selena Rourke was as good at reading people as anyone he knew, but he'd kept his share of secrets in his time. They were old habits and techniques, from days marching across the world with Prometheus Thane and thinking himself as dead inside as he'd soon be outside, and no part of him liked calling on them. But then, he'd had to do the same in New Mexico; steel himself for fire and blood and raise his wand for war.

It had been easier than he'd liked.

'This family home isn't for the family. It's for everyone _looking_ at the family.'

'This is the sort of thing which separates the pure-bloods from the _pure-bloods_ ,' said Selena Rourke, who could trace back her ancestry several hundred years. Nobody bearing the Rourke name had married a Muggle-born, but they might have married the grandchild of one.

Scorpius Malfoy, who could trace his name to the Norman Conquest in England and the time of Charlemagne in France and had found no signs of Muggle blood anywhere in that mix, gave a grimace of a smile. 'The difference being that _my sort_ do nothing by halves.'

His footsteps echoed down the corridors, but despite himself it was a comfort to hear Selena's in unison. There was nobody he would have wanted with him here, but the thought of bringing Selena didn't cause the twist in his gut that came with the idea of Albus or Rose in her place. And still he found himself saying, 'So why are you spending so long in England? I thought they hounded you out?'

It was a clumsy effort to turn the tables and washed over her as much as he should have expected. 'Yes, they'll be gathering with the pitchforks before long to see if I finish my metamorphosis into my mother and start to seize power and oppress them. Believe it or not I have a little business with my editor I thought I'd get out of the way, considering we've not talked face to face since I was last in the country for your wedding.'

'And Matt didn't come for support? Trouble in paradise?'

'He went back to continue his research on something terribly old and boring in South America while _I_ went to support Rose; they might have signed an armistice at your fund-raiser but let's not pretend it wouldn't have been bloody awkward to have him with me,' said Selena in an arch voice, then looked at all the portraits lining the halls. 'Oh, _my_ , don't they all just look like you.'

His mother's gift to his looks had been to soften them; make his face a little less pointed, his eyes a little more blue. It meant Scorpius looked most like his father, and his father's father, in dim lighting with the shadows to accentuate the angles of his face. Most like his family in the gloomy corners of the world.

So it was a cheap shot from Selena in response to his own petty blow, and he rounded on her with more anger than he'd anticipated. 'Blood will do that,' he snapped. 'Thicker than water, and all.'

'Ah,' said Selena with dawning realisation. 'Is it time for your regularly scheduled " _am I my father_ " freak-out?'

'Oh, _piss off_ , Selena, I didn't come here for you to give me your self-important shit.'

'No, it looks like you came here to give _yourself_ shit. Are you not allowed to outsource your torment?' At the flash in his eyes, she lifted her hands. 'I have no idea what's going on, and if it were up to me I'd let you stew in this until you got over yourself. But you helping Thane in the war is nothing like what your father did.' He squinted at her, confused, and for once Selena misread him and took his silence for apprehension. 'I know running into his mob again, this Argyris, might be bringing back some bad things,' she pressed on. 'But you know it's more complicated than that, and you know it's no reason to freak Rose out and go throw yourself into the den of Malfoy self-pity.'

 _Of course she doesn_ _'t know_ , remembered Scorpius, and found himself with no desire to illuminate her. However much Rose's news had set him to panic, Selena Rourke was not the first person he would chose to unburden himself to. And while she'd misunderstood the trigger incident, she wasn't a _million_ miles from the truth.

'I've spent the last five years trying to move past it,' he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and letting his gaze sweep down the halls of Malfoy family portraits. 'I might have thought I was fighting the Council, but I still let myself do horrible things on the justification that I was going to die anyway. And I never really answered for it, I was never punished, mostly because of Dad's deal but…' He sighed. 'Did it ever feel like it was one set of rules for us, another for everyone else?'

'I think our circumstances were different to everyone else's. _Yours_ bloody were. I don't think it's unfair to look at each situation differently. None of us _asked_ to be the kids who were awake during Phlegethon, none of us _asked_ to chase Thane for the Chalice across the world –'

'Well, we did, actually…'

'I mean it's stupid to pretend we're _not_ different. Would you feel better if you were locked up, Scorpius, really?'

Unwittingly, in her effort to reassure him she'd jabbed another weak spot, a fresh fear. What if Argyris resurfacing made people pay more attention to their connections, to his old deeds? What if it made them take a new look at Draco's deal, the one made to keep him out of prison? He couldn't afford that, not now, not while Rose was expecting; couldn't afford the risk of the hammer of justice falling down on him afresh –

He cleared his throat awkwardly and glanced to Selena. 'You're not wrong. I don't have any good reason to be here. We should go, but could you… wait outside? Just give me a minute.'

She rolled her eyes. 'Far be it from me to interrupt the Malfoy Self-Flagellation Hour, if you're that determined.' But her hand brushed his elbow as she left, and the retreat of her footsteps from the echoing halls of Malfoy Manor was not welcome.

Not because it left him alone, because he wasn't alone. The walls were lined with the judging eyes of ancestors, from the freshest portraits of Lucius and Abraxas, to others: Septimus, Brutus, even further back to Nicholas, right back to the start, the founder of the British branch of the family, Armand Malfoy. A Norman who had accompanied William the Conqueror, acting as magical adviser at the king's side throughout the Conquest, whose magic and cruelty was the reason Muggles felt accounts of the atrocities of the Harrying of the North were exaggerated, and had been rewarded the very ground Scorpius stood upon for his deeds. An oppressive shadow of blood and tradition and the stain of a name, a direct line of ancestors leading all the way to his father, and to him.

And to his child.

'I'm not you,' he snarled to the impassive portraits and the shadowy corners. ' _We_ _'re_ not you, we'll do nothing to follow in your footsteps, nothing to carry on your blasted traditions of cruelty and superiority –'

' _Poppycock,_ _'_ scoffed a voice on the walls, some two hundred years-dead ancestor he didn't immediately recognise, who didn't, he thought, have enough atrocities to their name to be a truly _significant_ Malfoy. 'You're one of us, boy, and you'll do your duty and you'll keep the name ever at the forefront of English affairs. I hear you've done a fine job of that already.'

'If I had my way,' Scorpius snapped at the portrait, 'I'd have this place taken apart brick by brick.'

The ancestor shrugged. 'You wouldn't be the first. Stones come and go, my boy. We change to survive. It's about _blood_. The place isn't the legacy; _you_ are.'

That was enough to have him turn on his heel, stalk out of the gloomy halls of Malfoy Manor, burst outside under the overcast grey sky, the shadow of the tall grey walls, stumble under the questioning, piercing gaze of Selena Rourke as she waited.

'Are we done with this little bout of indulgent self-flagellation?' she said archly.

'Yeah,' he said, chest heaving. 'It's like a tradition, I have to come back every once in a while to remind myself that I still _hate_ the place. We're done.'

But he knew it was a lie as they walked to the gates, for he hadn't been back here since closing the place up after the war, because he knew he wasn't done with every reason he'd been drawn back, because he knew _hate_ was too simple a word for a house he'd once called home. Because he suspected, with the ancestor's words, he was leaving nothing of his torments behind by leaving.

 _The place isn_ _'t the legacy; you are_.

§

The sun hung fat and gold in the sky when they could see it again at last, when they broke out from under the thick jungle canopy to find the air no less stifling, close and humid, like someone had tossed a warm, damp blanket over their faces. The tree-line ended not long before a steep descent of broken ground and jagged rocks over a sheer drop. Eva couldn't see the bottom from up here, but her briefing and maps had told her to expect this old, abandoned quarry where the Red Manticores' meeting was supposed to be.

'Remind me,' panted Albus as he straightened at last, following long hours where someone of his height stooped through thick jungle, 'what's our source on this convenient meeting?'

'We're not lucky enough to have someone inside the Manticores,' said Eva, and wondered when law enforcement had become 'we' for her. 'But feelers were put out after we knew what they'd stolen from New Mexico. Fences have to talk to each other and buyers and we got lucky.'

'Then I hope we're sure about the time.'

'There'll be a wait. At worst, the Portkey will reactivate every twenty-four hours so we might have to hunker in the jungle a little. Or risk making our own break for the border.'

Al glanced at her as he pulled his water flask. 'You didn't tell me that.'

'If I'd known it would have put you off, I would have.'

His expression creased. 'That's not what I mean –'

'Let's get moving,' she said, cutting him off impassively. 'Make sure it's clear up here and find a good vantage point. Hopefully they'll be relying on secrecy but if either side is coming here in force they might want to patrol the area. We have no idea how much these buyers trust the Red Manticores and vice versa.'

It became quickly apparent they were the first to arrive, and that unless they wanted to do some serious climbing they had a good vantage point but only a limited angle. Broken ground and rocks and sheer drops around the quarry proper forced them to this eastern side before the huge dip, the main access road winding its way out of the depths and towards the forest on the west.

'They won't Apparate in direct,' Eva said as they settled onto a rocky outcropping with a good view and settled down to watch an empty quarry and deserted jungle. 'That's a great way to trigger an ambush. There might be brooms, there might be Muggle vehicles. If they're flying, we make back for the canopy until the skies are clear. But they're going to want to be hidden from local magical authorities as much as possible; even if you're bribing someone you don't want to flaunt it.'

So they waited. They waited as the sun got heavier and fatter, they waited as even with the dusk stars began to shine in the clear, darkening skies above, and they waited in the stifling heat and stifling silence. She had her binoculars out to regularly scan the road and perimeter, but she could feel his eyes on her more often than she'd have liked. She didn't know if he wanted to say anything – she didn't know if _she_ wanted to say anything – so all she could do was pretend this wasn't happening.

She'd worked alone for too long to be used to company in the field. She'd been without him for too long to be used to his presence, that sense of warmth and confidence that came off Albus Potter in waves. Both made for a distraction her professional brain screamed at, and a sense of vulnerable uncertainty that made her heart want to back off and hide.

She should never have listened to Scorpius a week ago. She should have stayed hidden until it was over.

 _Don_ _'t be a fool, Saida. You knew it would_ never _be over._

'Look,' she said at last, tongue feeling too thick for her mouth. 'I know we can go round in circles until the cows come home, Albus –'

'I'm not expecting anything of you,' he said simply, green eyes for the moment on the view, gaze calm. 'We're both flying blind here. But you made the decision at Neimandhorn to leave, you made the decision last week to come back, and I'm not letting you make the decision of what happens next without me. I know if I let you go on this mission alone, there's a good chance you'd run again.' He hesitated. 'Maybe that would be the right choice; I don't know what comes next any more than I did five years ago. I _do_ know I'm not having this choice made for me again. That's all.'

Her breath caught. 'You make it sound like you don't trust me.'

He glanced over, expression flickering. 'I don't trust you to make this choice _with_ me, if I give you so much as half a chance to slip through my fingers again. We'll decide what comes next when the world isn't burning. And in the meantime, I'm with you.'

 _I_ _'m with you_. Nobody had ever put it like that to her before. She'd followed others, committed to Thane, committed to Albus, committed to Roux, been the follower and the soldier and the loyalist. But here, once again, was Albus Potter turning the tables on her, and in that moment she remembered just how infuriating and terrifying that was.

'I don't mean this in the self-pitying, dark and brooding way,' Eva said carefully, 'but a lot changes in five years –'

'It does. With us both.' He smiled, and while it was guarded it was still enough to make the stars seem a shade brighter. 'But how about we find that out instead of giving up for obstacles we've not even attempted? I'm not asking for much, Eva. Only that you don't push me away. The rest can come a day at a time.'

She was spared having to answer by a distant rumble, a sound that was for certain not of the jungle, and both of them snapped their attention back to the quarry and the road. It took a few minutes for the large jeep to come into sight, closed-top and trundling its way down the dirt track to the bottom. Eva pressed her binoculars to her eyes to see two figures emerge from the back of the jeep, draw wands, and begin to walk the perimeter of the bottom of the quarry.

'It's definitely one of the groups. Wizards. They're checking the area.'

'Any sign of the bosses?'

She shook her head. 'I think they're still in the jeep.' She watched as the guards seemed satisfied with the area and returned to flank the jeep, and then they all waited.

They did not have to wait for long. The next arrivals were on foot; Eva supposed they'd Apparated in nearby and made a slow, cautious approach. It was a quintet of witches and wizards, and by the garb of the fifth – hard-wearing but high quality robes – she suspected they were the buyers, wealth and not at all familiar to her. She knew their type, the wealth wizard with their hired lackeys for security, people who would buy all manner of goods and relics and magics for reasons which escaped her. It wasn't always for function or for direct power; the things people bought for prestige alone, even if they could never flaunt their ill-gotten wares without drawing the ire of law enforcement, boggled the mind. There had to be some thrill to secretly spending this much money she'd never understood.

But they were not the Red Manticores, so her binoculars swept back to the jeep. As the buyers descended the road to the quarry, the passenger door opened for a familiar tall, gangly, floppy brown-haired figure to emerge.

'It's them,' Eva confirmed to Al in a low voice. 'That's Leofric Tackleton, he's got to be handling this exchange.' The buyers were indeed approaching, Tackleton stepping forth with wide, welcoming arms, and while she couldn't hear them from here the body language, while cautious, gave all the displays of a cordial enough dealing.

'We can't take this many.' Al reached into his pack and pulled out a camera. 'I've got a long lens on this; we'll record as much as we can.'

'Confirm IDs on the buyers, and even if we know it's Tackleton, it'll be good to get a visual on two of their local muscle – oh, wait, three, there's another –'

The driver's door to the jeep had swung open, and a fourth Manticore emerged. She could only see the back of him, but everyone's body language changed. The buyers tensed but nobody went for their wands, and she frowned; nobody liked surprises in this kind of deal, but it was strange for a surprise to seem non-threatening. Stranger still, Tackleton stepped back with a gesture that was outright deferential to the fourth figure, who advanced to the gathering group, and when he turned to shake hands she could see his face.

The binoculars dropped from her hands. 'Oh my God.'

Albus was focused on screwing on the long lens on his camera. 'What?'

'That's not –' Her eyes had to be playing tricks on her; with shaking hands she lifted the binoculars again, and tried to stop her heart from thudding its way out of her chest, tried to settle herself so she could look with clear vision and confirm that she was wrong, deranged, imagining things. But Albus was looking through his camera by the time she got another good look, and his uttered oath made it clear they saw the same as she stared at the fourth member of the Red Manticores.

She shouldn't have been surprised she was right. Because she never in her life would mistake the face of Prometheus Thane.


	5. Dawn Goes Down Today

**Chapter 5: Dawn Goes Down Today**

The march back through the jungle had happened without words, but not in silence. Not as the jungle night came alive, insects chirping all around, low sounds on the wind of animal life stirring as the sun dipped beneath the horizon and the stars and moons reigned above.

By then they could see nothing in the dark, so Albus watched as Eva stopped at the first open patch they found after dusk. A little camping tent was put up with ease, and they both ducked inside to the space much larger on the inside, though it was still only twelve square feet of space. She stalked to the desk, unslung her pack – and then all but collapsed onto the stool beside it. He stood, helpless, as she stared at the ground and croaked, 'This isn't possible.'

He drew a deep breath. 'There are explanations. You might have been wrong –'

Her scoff reeked of as much mockery of herself as him. 'I know his face.'

'An illusion, then! Polyjuice! _Something_!'

'Polyjuice requires reagents from the body at the time of brewing. Anything from Prometheus would have degraded by now.' Her voice went calm, disconnected, reeling off her knowledge. 'There are variants on a Polyjuice to look older, younger, _different_ , but still the same, original person.'

'Then illusions –'

Eva lifted her head, face screwed into more anguish than he'd seen openly from her. 'You saw him down there. He shook hands, he interacted with his environment, he moved. Illusions aren't that complicated. Besides.' Her gaze dropped. 'I saw how he moved, walked, talked.'

'You might know him on sight,' said Albus, stalking to the desk, 'but you and I both know there are magics in this world which make it hard to say anything is impossible –'

'Like people coming back from the dead?' Her shoulders hunched up. 'I killed him, Al. I cast the spell and I held him as he died and then I left him on that mountaintop. But I always found myself wondering if it was a dream; if I was even capable of striking against him like that…

He hunkered down next to her, reached out – and put his hand on the desk beside them cautiously. 'You killed him and he died. I know, because _I_ found his body. We _checked_ , it was _him_. We took the body back to England and he had a burial and hardly anyone gave a damn.'

She glanced up, looking at nothing, and he saw fear shine into her eyes. 'They'll blame me,' she whispered. 'They'll say I helped him fake his death, that we left Niemandhorn on the run together, that I was always loyal to him –'

Words tumbled from her like the pebbles before an avalanche, like every piece of her was about to come crashing down, so in a heartbeat his hand was on her shoulder like he could hold up the mountain. 'Stop. They won't think that, because they'll be too busy figuring out _if_ or _how_ he's alive. And you are not without allies.'

'I'm not without enemies, either; Castillo was already circling the wagons and she'll use this however she can to discredit me. Roux can only protect me so far, only spend so much political capital to shelter me, and the more people who suspect I've lied and tricked everyone about Thane, the harder it'll be –'

His hands came to her face, tilting her to look at him, though he could see the shuddering panic setting in and that was enough to leave him almost as scared. 'Then don't _turn_ to Roux. Give him your report and then go.'

She tensed under his touch. 'Run, again?'

'No. _Come with me_.'

Eva jerked back at that as if his hands stung, as if the promise of closeness stung, and she stumbled to her feet. 'How is Britain going to be better? If SADOM can't help me – the one place where I did something _good_ in this world, if _they_ won't protect me, why will Britain…'

'I can keep you sheltered. Protected. Call in my family, call in my favours.' He stood, determination steeling in him like a wall against the oncoming waves he would not let falter. 'With the GWA forming, nobody wants to rock the boat too hard. And none of your crimes were in British territory, and Britain still won't extradite you anywhere you'll get the Kiss, and extradition treaties have gone to _shit_ anyway since the Thorn War!'

She reeled back, and he realised half his words were washing over her, meeting the barrier of her fear and uncertainty. 'I can't ask you…'

'You're not asking,' he said with a stubborn set to his jaw. 'It's happening. We take the Portkey tomorrow, report to Roux, and then we leave.'

He watched her as she hesitated, then slumped, stood in the middle of this tiny tent and still looking as if she was adrift in a vast sea. At last she gave a stiff, unsure nod, and when she spoke again it was clear her thoughts had circled back around in the vortex sucking and swirling through her heart and mind. 'I thought he was dead, gone. I thought I was… free.'

'You are _free_ ,' Albus said, stalking to her and bringing his hands again to her shoulders. 'You've been free since you fought him in Portugal. You freed yourself then, you freed yourself killing Downing, fleeing him in Venice, breaking _us_ out in Ager Sanguinis.'

'It's not that simple,' she creaked, desperate gaze meeting his. 'You never understood because I never explained it before; he lifted me up, he gave me purpose. I thought…' She almost looked away, and he saw the effort it took for her to stand her ground. 'I thought it was over.'

'A lot of us did,' he said softly. 'And we'll find out the truth, too. Whatever trick or magic this is, whatever the consequence, Eva, you're _not alone_.'

He felt her hands curl in his jacket for a moment, but when she pulled away it wasn't with a sudden jerk. There was a deliberate flex to her fingers, a deliberate steel as her hands dropped, and he knew her well enough by now to know she teetered at the edge of her vulnerability. She had never been a woman to succumb to it easily, and he did not imagine five years on her own had made that easier.

When she spoke, her voice dropped along with her gaze. 'Thank you.' She stepped away, slid from his grasp, though he felt a reluctance in her fingertips as they trailed down his arm before breaking contact. 'There's a second camp-bed in here we can put up.'

He watched her pull away, watched the veils of control fall back across her eyes, and while he wanted to follow, brush aside the barriers, he knew it had been too long to push on scars reopened this violently. So he let his bag slide to the floor, and turned away.

'Then I guess,' Albus rumbled, 'it's time for me to try to turn ration packs into something edible.'

They ate without much ceremony or enjoyment, and collapsed into their bunks not long after, lulled to sleep by exhaustion and the chirruping of the wilderness beyond the tent, magics of the canvas keeping them protected from sight and wildlife. He had almost drifted off before he heard her, tossing and turning in the camp bed feet away from his, low words he couldn't make out or understand slipping past her lips.

He didn't dare wake her. But he couldn't lie here and sleep and ignore her torment, so Albus dragged his camp bed nearer, lay down, and reached across the space for her hand. He felt her twitch under his touch, but she didn't stir, didn't wake.

It did not stop her agitated sleep, not fully. But the squeeze of a hand was all he could give, and in the long night in the middle of nowhere in the shadow of the rising past, it was something.

§

'Liquid lunch, truly the finest of inventions,' sighed Selena, leaning back on her high chair and sipping her glass of prosecco as sun oozed through the bar's tall windows to drape them and their table in warmth and gold.

'Speak for yourself.' Rose sipped her coffee and helped herself to one of the little sandwiches on the high tea tray. 'Some of us have to be back at work this afternoon.'

'I'm working, too. It's a piece on the best placed to get respectably sozzled at lunchtime in Diagon Alley.'

'Really?'

Selena arched an eyebrow as she put her glass down. 'Of course not. You think I can still work in this country?'

Rose glanced about the quiet, classy establishment she'd used for a few business meetings in her time with White Wands. The other patrons were much like them, young professionals stepping out of the office able to enjoy a more luxurious break than scoffing a sandwich at their desk. 'Nobody cares. Your name was on the table booking and nobody cared.'

'And still I'm always the one who has to go through the extra security checks with international Portkeys. It's like everyone forgot my mother tried to take over the world through a veneer of respectability. What do they think, that I've got explosive runes in my handbag? If I used them it'd be in protest of the waiting room snacks, not in protest of unchecked magical globalism.'

'Ironically we have the opposite problem.'

'I know.' Selena sipped her drink again. 'It's like we're in the bloody Dark Ages. Hours to skip even across Europe. There are times I wonder if I could travel more efficiently by Muggle means. Let's hope the brand-new GWA manages to fix all of that without spooking people too badly, hmm?'

'And if it does,' said Rose levelly, 'would you come back?'

'Oh, darling, I'm far too busy with my work and -'

'And it's been five years. Five _years_.' Rose set down her coffee cup and met her gaze. 'I understand why you felt you had to leave after the Thorn War. I don't pretend to comprehend what went down between you and your mother, but I get that there was scrutiny to avoid. Is this going to be your life, though? Roaming the world, writing under a pseudonym, dragging Matt -'

Selena stiffened. 'I'm not _dragging_ Matt,' she said with a heat that made Rose wonder if, for the first time ever, she'd actually found a weak spot. 'He suggested this and he _wanted_ to come with me, he can do all of his bloody research and writing anywhere _or_ he benefits from the travel. _Lots_ of people travel for a living.'

'Okay, okay!' Rose lifted a hand. 'I'm sorry. You two are alright, though? I mean - I know we don't talk much about him -'

' _Really_ , I should be asking about _you_ and him _._ You know, I've always asked him if he wants to come whenever I've been coming to see you. I never wanted to assume he wouldn't, or make him feel like he couldn't. But it had honestly become habit by now. I didn't expect him to agree to come to the party.'

Rose stirred her coffee. It didn't need it, but fiddling with the spoon gave her something to do with her hands, meant she didn't have to look Selena in the eye. She knew she was being diverted; Selena was the master of turning a conversation she didn't like back around on the other person, but such was her talent that even being aware of it didn't mean she could wriggle out. 'I was surprised. We honestly hadn't talked since you guys left the country; if it weren't for you I'd never have known how he was. That and his career and books. He's done well for himself.'

'He has,' said Selena with a small smile of undisguised pride.

'He really didn't say anything to you about it before the party?'

She shrugged. 'I was sort of breezing through the formality of telling him I was going and asking if he wanted me to book him in with the Portkey and hotel, too, and he just said… well, he said _yes_ , and when I asked him if he was dying or something he just said it was about time. He'd got his brooding face on so I thought I'd talk to him about it later, but, well. It'll have to be next week now.'

'It wasn't anything earth-shattering at the party,' Rose confessed, 'except for that he came and spoke to me, which in itself was earth-shattering. Like he told you, he said it was about time. That we'd been apart for a while and a lot had changed and maybe it was time for us to talk again. He didn't actually _mention_ the ritual or - or de Sablé, or forgiveness. It felt more like the opening of a door and I didn't want to press him. I mean, has anything happened with you two to make -'

'What, make him suddenly about-face on being determined to walk away from you forever? No, nothing comes to mind.'

Rose watched her, heard the words intended on striking a blow, on driving her off, and sighed. Selena Rourke used so many twists and turns to hide her true thoughts and feelings from others that it was enough to put off all but the most determined; worse, Rose suspected Selena sometimes lost herself down the winding paths. And she couldn't lie; wondering about Selena and Matt meant she didn't have to worry about her own looming issues.

But she was saved from diving into Selena's woes or dissembling about her own by the chime from the locket in her pocket, and with a sigh she pulled it out. 'That'll be work, it's -' Only she flipped the locket open to see not Marius Smedley or one of her clients, but Scorpius. Even in miniature form, enchantments sending his face through their magical lockets for instantaneous communication, she could see the cold, sombre glint in his eye.

'You should probably take a long lunch or the afternoon off, dear,' he said. 'Albus is at the flat and he wants to talk to us. It's important.'

She glanced across the table then back. 'I'm with Selena -'

'He says bring her too.'

Selena arched an eyebrow as Rose snapped the locket shut. 'All's well?' she said, not having picked up Scorpius' side.

'I don't know. Albus is back, and he wants to see us. Including you.'

They paid up, abandoning half-finished sandwiches and almost a whole glass of prosecco before Selena gulped the lot down, and left. On Diagon Alley they were within walking distance to the flat, so emerged into the bright spring sun. Despite her best efforts, Rose found herself storming along at a pace almost a jog, Selena wobbling beside her.

'Let me _digest_ , Weasely, Merlin alive.' She grabbed her elbow to force her to slow. 'Besides, you have to brief me. Did what I think was going on happen at the party with Al? Scorpius was cagey.'

'What do you _think_ was -' Rose sighed. 'It was Eva, yes. Scorpius didn't tell me much; I knew nothing beforehand and we talked only a little that evening, and then… well, then everything happened.'

'So, days after Scorpius is attacked by one of Thane's old goons, Albus returns from time with she who was once Thane's most loyal disciple and grim news. Coincidence?'

'It never is.'

The look on Albus' face when they got to the flat made it clear they were right. He stood near the windows, bathed in the warm sunshine that still could not lighten the frown on his face. Scorpius stood across the room, hands on the back of the sofa, too agitated to sit, but by his expression Rose surmised he knew little more than them.

'Oh,' she said, closing the door behind Selena. 'I've got that "just like old times" feeling.' They stood there for a moment, the four of them who had been together longest, through Phlegethon and the Chalice hunt and the final Lethe crisis, and nothing was said for a long moment as all eyes fell on Albus.

His gaze turned to the window, but his voice was a low rumble that only made the tension shudder. 'I've come directly from South Africa. After a deployment to DR Congo.'

Scorpius looked fit to burst with all his waiting. ' _Deployment_?'

'I volunteered to help Eva with a surveillance job. A meeting between a smuggler's ring and their buyers. The smugglers are called the Red Manticores, and their core is made up of - of people who used to work for Prometheus Thane.' There was something thick in Albus' voice. 'Leofric Tackleton, Gisila Faust, and -'

'Niko Argyris.' Scorpius shrugged as Albus looked at him, surprised. 'You go first.'

'We made it to the meeting point. Our objectives were merely to gather intel, learn more on who -' Albus cut himself off, and Rose realised he'd been meandering. He was stalling, and the look on his face as he at last turned to them said he knew it. 'Prometheus Thane was there. Or someone who looked a lot like him to the extent it's fooled Eva.'

Rose saw the colour drain from Scorpius' face, and she rushed to him only to find her hands hanging by her side, useless, unable to reach out. Behind her, Selena said in a voice far too deliberately flat, 'Assume the obligatory "that's impossible" has been said.'

Albus scowled. 'I know. That's what I said. And she pointed out the number of impossibilities _we_ _'ve_ faced and done.'

'Okay, so your girlfriend is either super _keen_ or super _damaged_ to quickly believe something _looking_ like Thane is Thane.' Selena stalked to the middle of the room, gaze as ardent as Rose remembered seeing it. 'Way to jump to conclusions because we've done all kinds of crazy shit.'

'It's not the same,' agreed Rose.

'I know.' Scorpius' voice started almost too soft to hear, but then he lifted his head, corners of his eyes creased. 'Coming back from the dead'simpossible, right?'

'That was _different_ ,' she said swiftly. 'You - there was the Chalice, _you_ weren't really brought back, _it_ was -'

'And that was considered impossible, and yet it was done by _Prometheus Thane_.' He looked at Albus. 'Where's Eva?'

Albus' shoulders stiffened. 'She should be in the country by now; she took her own route and is laying low.'

'Okay,' said Selena, raising a finger. 'Are we going to talk about _that_?'

He scowled at her. 'What _that_?'

'She just _happens_ to resurface the same time _at least_ all her old buddies are putting the band back together?'

'I'm not going through this dance again,' said Albus firmly. 'I trust her.'

'Al,' said Rose swiftly, cutting off Selena, 'we shouldn't jump to any conclusions, but bear in mind that it's been five years. Five _years_.'

'Five years since her chance of a pardon was destroyed by Lillian's conspiracy, a conspiracy _she_ helped bring down. Five years since _she_ killed Prometheus Thane, five years since she saved lives in Cape Town and five years since she helped rescue _you_.' Al stabbed a finger at Selena. 'I didn't come back here for this.'

A cold memory slithered into Rose's gut, a reminder of how far Al could be pushed before he'd break, but at last Scorpius spoke again. 'You're right, Al. This isn't about her.' He straightened and looked across the room. ' _I_ found her in South Africa the other week. _I_ _'m_ the reason she resurfaced. And if I trust her judgement on anything, it's Prometheus Thane.'

Rose was keenly aware she was the only person in the room whose past wasn't coming back for a haunting, and lifted her hands. 'Also, before we all regress too wildly, what's being done about this, Al?'

Albus' head snapped to her, as if she'd snatched his attention from something unseen, and he let out a slow breath. 'Judge Roux has been briefed so SADOM knows. That means what's going to turn into the GWA Security Council in a month knows or will know.'

'Which means,' said Rose pointedly, 'the world's forces are _on_ this. So we can all stop looking like we're about to saddle up, right?' She saw the dissatisfaction as they shifted their feet. 'My compromise is this: we _all_ of us have resources to find out more. Al can tap Harry, Scorpius and Selena your connections, and I have contacts through the company. You can guarantee the world's law enforcement is going to be asking the same questions we are. So let's not go and do something stupid on our own; let's find out what they know.'

'My,' drawled Selena after an obvious effort to steel herself, 'that sounds halfway healthy. Haven't you realised that's not how we work?' But she shrugged. 'I have friends in several governments. I'll put my ear to the ground.'

Albus nodded, looking mollified. 'I need to talk to Dad anyway.'

Rose frowned. _Yeah, with Eva smuggled into the country, I bet you do._ 'My security clearance should get me a lot once I start asking the right questions.'

Scorpius only gave a sullen nod. 'I'll look into things on my end. But if the GWA is rattled by this _and_ the Manticores, this explains a few things.' He shrugged at their glances. 'Magical Cooperation and Law Enforcement have asked me to notify them if I'm travelling anywhere. They sometimes get twitchyabout me, still.'

' _Well_ ,' sighed Selena. 'I should go and do some Flooing, then. Here we go again!'

 _Not_ , thought Rose as they all said their swift, tense goodbyes, _if I have anything to say about it._ She turned to Albus once Selena had left, lips thin. 'I'm sorry.'

He slumped against the wall, and only now did Rose see how truly tiredhe looked. 'You're not wrong. But I'm not doing this dance again. _Please_ trust my judgement, Rose.'

She looked at Scorpius, stood as if tension had crammed into every muscle and left him immovable, and realised she was going to have enough on her plate without borrowing trouble. Her eyes flickered back to Albus. 'I do,' she said, and not only because she had to. 'What's her status? Legally, I mean?'

' _Awkward_. She's got deals with South Africa, and most of what will become the GWA probably won't piss off SADOM by locking her up. But she's still officially wanted and will get arrested in enough places if she shows her face. And then it becomes a question of who wants to fight to save her, and who wants to fight to condemn her, and who fights hardest.'

She bit her lip. 'Are you okay?'

'Yeah.' Albus sighed and straightened. 'I thought it was over. I thought she was back and it wasn't…'

'I don't think it'll ever stop.' Scorpius' voice came low and hollow, and was enough to send a chill down her spine.

Albus met her gaze, the unspoken exchange clear enough for him to straighten his robes. 'I'm going to go see Dad. Even if he hasn't heard, he'll need to.'

'Good luck.' Rose watched him head to the Floo, disappear in a puff of green smoke, and grabbed Scorpius' arm. 'Talk to me.'

He stared at her hand like he didn't understand it. 'What am I supposed to say?'

'Scorp, we have talked _so little_ about the war…'

'Because nothing _good_ comes of it.' He pulled his arm free, and her fingertips tingled with cold at his absence. 'What'll we discuss? What _I_ did? What _you_ did?'

 _That was quicker than I expected_. 'Not to put too fine a point on it, but I had no idea who Argyris and the others _were_. Now it might be very relevant.'

'Not as relevant as _him_.'

'We don't _know_ that, we don't know _anything_ about that. Yes, Eva knew him best, but Prometheus Thane had a prodigious talent for getting under people's skin; she is _hardly_ the most level-headed when it comes to him, and neither are you!' He looked apprehensive, wounded, and she pressed on before he fell into old habits of lashing out to keep her at bay when scared. They had not been in such a situation for a _long_ time. 'When we found you in Rotterdam, when we camped afterwards and then in Saint Annard, you called him by his first name. You believed he'd backed your plan to hunt Selena. You two fought together like you were _used_ to it. I noticed the about-face after he was captured, the pushing him away.'

'Are you saying I _lied_ -'

'I'm _saying_ that Thane has always meant _something_ to you, Scorpius. And we never talked about it. But it might be very relevant. And stop _pushing_ me away; I'm on your side!' She stepped closer again, slid a hand across his back. 'Where you go, I go, remember?'

His hands made fists in the throw over the back of the sofa, shoulders hunched in. 'This - this is exactly why I've been… distant.'

'Thane?' She tried to scour the dubious tone from her voice.

'The past.' His gaze lifted to rake across the walls, across the cosy home they'd built for themselves these five years, and never let shadows of history encroach on. Much. 'There are so many things standing in the way of the future, and it's all what came before.' At last he turned to her, grabbed both her hands in his, and clutched like she'd be swept away if he didn't. 'I went to Malfoy Manor. I mean, you guessed that, you sent Selena…'

'I had an inkling.'

'I've ignored the place the last years. Ignored my father, ignored my ancestry. But then you told me - I mean - we're having a kid.' Finally the news seemed to do something to his face other than cause more furrows; finally she saw something open up in his expression. It wasn't yet joy or excitement, but it was, perhaps, a hint of awe. She wondered if she'd ever get past _her_ gut-wrenching terror and to that point. 'A little - I mean, there, see, I was going to say a little Malfoy, but we've not talked about that sort of thing _ever_ , and you never took my name, and you _know_ I don't have a problem with that -'

'Scorpius.' She tightened her grip on his hands. 'There is time to talk about that.'

'I know, and the name isn't the _point_ , it's a symptom. I have to decide, and maybe some day help this child decide, what comes next for the Malfoy family. In _name_ , in prestige, in identity. I'm handing any child of mine a legacy of - of exploitation, of superiority -'

'No, any child of yours is going to have a _hero_ for a father, who fought to save Hogwarts, to save the _world_. Whose family tree includes a man who _died_ to stop great power from falling into the hands of great evil -'

'Whose family home was the site of the imprisonment and torture of their maternal grandparents, whose father killed his way across the world believing like an idiot that it was for a greater good instead of _propping up_ that evil -'

 _There it is._ 'Prometheus Thane,' said Rose in a sharp, clear voice, 'lied to and manipulated you. If he's back or if he isn't back is _no_ reflection on you, on what you've done, on _who you are_.'

He slumped at that, but she could see the tension still ebbing from him, like he cast a longer shadow to make all the dark corners of the flat curl and warp in around them. 'I know,' lied Scorpius. 'I guess we just spent so much time thinking about only the present. Not the future, and not the past.'

'We earned that.'

His gaze lifted to hers, greyer-eyed than usual, more _Malfoy_ than usual, as he always was when at his most serious or sorrowful. 'Maybe we ran out of credit.'

§

The only noise in the small, gloomy room was the chink of coin on coin as Gaspar counted and the sound of Matt's blood rushing in his ears. Beyond these paper-thin walls was the shouts of the streets, the rumble of cars, though all of it some distance away. None of it would draw closer; people didn't come to this hovel in the favelas of Rio if they didn't have to.

Gaspar placed the last coin down with a _clink_ of finality. 'Eight hundred.'

Matt fought to keep his expression level, as if he'd done this a thousand times before. 'As agreed.' It was difficult to not sweat; the streets outside were sun-soaked and while he'd dressed for the weather and the area, even in his short-sleeved shirt he felt the back of his neck swelter under his hair.

'As agreed,' confirmed Gaspar. He didn't look much of a wizard, in vest and headscarf, but in these parts of Rio the line between magic and Muggle was thinner so long as it came to crime and money. Everyone was equally screwed, and while Matt knew they didn't break the international statutes, they certainly bent them.

But he had what Matt wanted, and slid the bulky brown envelope over the sticky table. Somewhere across the room, the gaudy neon-lit wall clock, resplendent with a pair of flickering green-bulbed breasts, ticked far too loudly and with irregularity enough to give him a headache. Still, he snatched up the envelope and cracked it open, tugging out the sheaf of papers inside with care.

'You of course can check,' said Gaspar as if offended, as if he hadn't counted every single coin, and pushed his chair back to tilt on two legs, hands behind his head. 'You knew my reputation.'

'We agreed that I would be paying for specific content. If the sketches of Euryleon's tomb aren't in the bundle then you're down one hundred galleons.'

'We have a -'

'And I will pay good money for the rest,' said Matt with a curt confidence he didn't feel. 'But I'm after Catalina's _complete_ works on Euryleon. Or as complete as can be. And they're not here.'

Gaspar grimaced. 'I will look. Perhaps stored separately.'

'Or perhaps I get my hundred galleons back.'

'I will look!' Gaspar stood, hands raised, and skulked for the back door.

Matt slipped the package in his satchel. How the writings of a 16th century Italian wizard on the mysteries of a magical scholar of ancient Greece had ended up in Rio was beyond him, but magical Rio boasted a black market unlike any other in the world. If anyone wanted anything and was prepared to give lots in money and little in questions, they would not come away disappointed. Except here he was, in a squat favela of a relatively reputable fence, who had first tried to con him out of a hundred galleons and now claimed that a section of ancient writings had been left 'in the back.' One of those he could believe.

The other was a problem.

'Shit.' He moved quickly for the front door, the way he'd arrived, only to find it not budge. 'Shit,' he hissed again, and drew his wand just as the the back door creaked open.

'Sorry, friend.' Gaspar's wand was pointed at him, but he wasn't alone. A short, well-built, plain-faced wizard had emerged from the door, armed, and there were silhouettes behind him in the corridor still. 'Your money was good, but theirs was better.'

Matt's right hand, the enchanted and runed prosthetic of living steel, reached around his back for metal to meet metal. He did not look away from Gaspar. 'For what? If you wanted to sell to someone else, why am I _here_?'

'You wouldn't be after the writings of Catalina if you didn't have something already,' said the squat wizard. 'And my boss respects your work, so he'd like to see what you got so far.'

'Hate to disappoint your employer,' Matt drawled. The door behind him wouldn't just be locked, he knew; it'd be enchanted, and beyond what an _Alohomora_ could contend with. This didn't stop him from whipping his wand down, a silent incantation sparking magic forth for a gout of smoke to come billowing out, filling the room to blind him, blind them, and burn eyes and lungs. It kept him hidden, kept them startled, and was a terrible tactic when confined in a tight space.

When the adamantine sword was in his hand, crashing down on the lock to send the door bursting open, sunlight tumbled in as smoke tumbled out and he was no longer in a confined space. Matt bolted into the street, sputtering from his own distraction, and had no time to think about his destination as broke into a sprint.

And ran flat into a ghost.

The man who looked like Prometheus Thane had been waiting in the street, and when Matt bolted into him Thane flipped him over his hip as if he weighed nothing, knocking him on his back. Stars exploded in front of Matt's face, vision spinning, and he gasped out of shock and to scrabble for the air knocked out of his lungs.

'Don't worry, Mister Doyle.' The tall, aristocratic figure of Prometheus Thane, the sun shining behind him to blur out his high cheekbones and sharp features, leaned down at him. 'You never do disappoint.'

Matt felt his jaw drop, felt the pounding in his ears get louder. 'That's impossible,' he croaked. 'You're _dead_.'

'And now I'm not; must we dance that dance again? It gets ever so tiresome. As would the dance of me chasing you for old secrets, so hand over what you have and we can skip to the end.'

'Skipping to the end sounds rather bad for _me_ , though,' Matt pointed out.

'As you say. We can do this the hard way,' said the man who looked like Thane, who raised his wand into Matt's face - and then darkness consumed him.


	6. The Water Comes Ashore

**Chapter 6: The Water Comes Ashore**

The Horned God was a pub in centre of Muggle London that was far too run-down, far too grimy, and with far too little patronage to make any sense. This was exactly how its proprietors liked it, encircled as the establishment was with enough charms and enchantments to guarantee any Muggle would look at the front, shrug, and carry on with their day completely forgetting the forgettable place's existence. But out here it was far enough away from Diagon Alley and the functions of the Ministry of Magic's business to be left to its own devices, which Scorpius also suspected was the intent.

After all, he was coming here to find a wanted criminal.

He was halfway through a sticky pint from a sticky tankard at the sticky bar before the bartender, a big, gruff, bearded fellow, leaned forward and muttered, 'Room 2b, upstairs.' Scorpius was frowned at when he tried to take his pint with him, but it gave him an excuse to not have to finish the acrid drink anyway.

This was a pub which took the privacy of its guests seriously. He'd had to slide a note across the bar on arrival to get a look in, had to sit and drink while he waited, and nothing had been confirmed that he was even in the right place until now. Or he was being sent to a room to be shanked in peace and quiet. But he'd been to murkier places in his work for the Foundation, had to rub elbows with those off the beaten track plenty to get help to those who needed it. He'd included coins with the note; not enough for special treatment, enough to be turned away without consequence if he was in the wrong place.

A knock on the door to one of the private rooms upstairs and it opened to show Eva Saida, gaze cautious as she looked past him, up and down the corridor. 'I know how to not be followed,' he assured her.

'You stand out,' was her only greeting as she ushered him into the small room, with its cramped desk and bunk.

'People honestly don't care too much who I am -'

'They care that your jacket costs more than they earn in a week.'

'Walking through the dark underbelly of London is no excuse to let fashion slide.' He looked her up and down. 'Long time, no see.'

'It's been two weeks.'

'It's been a _long_ two weeks,' he pointed out. 'How sure are you?'

Eva Saida was not a very expressive woman, so he knew the world was ending because her eyebrow twitched at his question. 'I'm sure.'

Scorpius sagged, moving to slump against the wall. 'Holy shit. _How_?'

'I don't know. But Prometheus spent years, even before he and I parted ways, sticking his nose into all manner of mysterious magics and secrets. And then there's all the work he did to bring you back…'

'You think he had an ace up his sleeve?'

She shook her head and perched on the bunk. The windows were unshuttered, spring light crawling into the tiny room, but still the place felt drained of colour. 'If there is one thing I knew for sure about Prometheus Thane, it's to never underestimate him.'

He stared at nothing. 'It makes sense he'd be the one to get the group together. Tackleton and Faust and Argyris - I'd assumed Loganach would be behind it, somewhere -'

'Griogair's dead.' Eva's voice was low, bland. 'Fight with Australian law enforcement maybe a year ago.'

'Oh.' Something swirled in Scorpius' gut, and he was horrified to realise it was grief. 'He was always - you know, he was always kind to me.'

'He didn't have the petty malice of some of them. He was smarter than most of them. I never knew for sure if he was pleasant because it was easier and more effective to be, but he was Prometheus' second for a reason.' Her gaze switched to her hands, brow furrowing an iota. 'I almost envied him, but being Prometheus' second meant he was sent away a lot, given independence a lot. I was his dog. It kept me close to hand.'

'Why do I care,' he said, numb. 'Griogair was a criminal and a killer; he was part of the Hogwarts team, I saw him kill people, he killed people _with me_ -'

'They were a team. Your team.' He heard her hesitate. 'Prometheus' team. And you endured a lot together; it forms a bond.' Something made him look at her, and he found her dark eyes searching. 'Did it occur to you that you were with Prometheus' team as long as you were with the Five?'

The grief in his gut swirled again, and became that to which he realised it had always been so close: disgust, a rising bile that surged to his throat to choke him. 'It's not the same.'

'It's similar. A group united in cause, with the whole world against them. I was never very good at being a team player, but I saw it. I spent a very long time set apart even in the group, but I would be lying if I pretended they all meant nothing to me.' He saw her clench and unclench her fists, saw her look away. 'I lied a lot.'

'And him. Thane. Prometheus.' Rose had pointed out he'd once called the man by his first name, and then stopped the moment he'd been found alive. It had not been an intentional deception.

'He had… has a talent for finding the best of you, and bringing it to the forefront. For his own purposes, of course, and in many ways he then used it and corrupted it. But he only wanted the best. And he made us the best.' She stood, and when he dragged his eyes up to meet hers he hated the mirror he found. 'No, they won't understand.'

'I haven't hidden it,' Scorpius croaked, and heard his own lie. 'I didn't know how to talk about it. Think about it.'

'You stood a good chance of never having to again.' There was no judgement in Eva's voice, only a hint of regret. 'I'm sorry for my part in bringing it up. You deserved, more than me, to get out.'

'No.' His gaze snapped up again. 'I knew _some_ of this would come up if you returned. That was a price I am more than willing to pay, for Albus' sake.'

It was her turn to flinch away in this exchange of unwelcome truths and stumbling understanding. 'I wouldn't have come back if I knew this was going to happen.' She faltered. 'How has he been?'

'In truth?' Scorpius shrugged. 'Seeing him angry and upset about this is the most alive I've seen him in a long time. He's been - I think "going through the motions" is the term for it. At first it did him good for us to work together, for him to spend more time with me, with his family; that was badly needed after his time away, after the war. But for the last couple of years…' He sighed. 'It's like he's been in a holding pattern, waiting for or figuring out how to make his life move forward.'

'I never wanted that for him. I never wanted him to _wait_ -'

'I don't know that he has,' he admitted. 'He's not been a celibate monk the last five years; he's dated, there were some nice girls he kept finding he had nothing in common with. Oh, and that one Russian girl he _did_ get on swimmingly with, but she also worked internationally and they parted ways before it could be anything serious. But I think the reasons they got on were the reasons they fell apart: a life outside the ordinary. For all his efforts, "ordinary" is nothing describing Albus.'

'I didn't think it would be anything describing you.' Eva shrugged. 'Married man, heading up his own organisation.'

Scorpius winced. 'Which possibly lends evidence that there is no such thing as ordinary. Perhaps I should say there aren't many people who share Albus' ordinary. You came back to him. He followed you halfway across the world just for more time. Does it need to be more complicated than that?'

'With the Manticores out there, regardless of Prometheus, my chances of a life not spent on the run have halved. Which puts me back exactly where I was five years ago.'

'You can't run again,' he found himself blurting before he meant to. 'I understand why you would, but Al, he wouldn't…'

'I am going to see this situation with Thane through,' said Eva, low and steady, 'but I don't know _what_ I can do beyond that except ruin his life.' She let out a slow breath. 'And I've done that enough already for _three_ lifetimes.'

§

The Auror Office in the Ministry of Magic always made Albus' skin crawl, like the chairs were too small and the walls too close and every eye was on him. It was reminiscent of his youth, when he was forever apprehensive of being stared at as Harry Potter's son, except even if he'd come to see his father the gazes felt more like judgemental law enforcement than star-struck bystanders. Maybe he'd skirted the law too many times to be happy about this place. It felt like everyone knew it.

'Tagging you in,' said Ron as he slid out of Harry's office. 'Got to be straight with you; he's in a funny mood.'

'Oh, good. Dad and I do our best thinking in funny moods.' Al stood, shoulders heavy under the burden of dark knowledge. Did his father already know about Thane, or was there something else afoot? Neither was promising.

Ron caught his arm as he went to pass. 'Thought everything was alright with you guys?'

'It is.' Albus felt his face crease, even if he wasn't lying. 'It's just been a long week.'

'Uh-huh. So much for your holiday.' Ron looked him up and down, gaze holding every inch of scrutiny a veteran Auror could muster. 'If you're starting another war, you need to tell me. So I can get ahead of the curve on early retirement.'

'No wars!' said Al with a grin and laugh he didn't feel, and he slipped past Ron and into his father's office.

Harry sat behind his desk with a cup of tea that looked like it had been left to go cold. Age gave his father a distinguished weathering; silver temples, crow's feet crawling out the corners of his eyes, a gauntness to his cheeks that all made him look far more severe. This did not help Albus' nerves as he looked up and his eyes, too, were piercing. 'I was surprised to hear you were back in the country. I thought you were going nomad again.'

 _Again_. Every time Albus thought peace was made with the past, it hissed in the corner. 'Something made me come back.' He pulled up a chair and looked his father in the eye. 'I was in South Africa and I have some contacts there, and I heard certain bits of news that either you already know, or you _really_ need to know.'

They watched each other for long moments, before Harry flipped open a folder. 'You shouldn't jump at rumour. A second-hand report that -'

'It's not a second-hand report.' Al took a deep breath. 'Because I made the report.'

'What?'

'I was part of the expedition to DR Congo to observe the Red Manticore's goods exchange which caught sight of Prometheus Thane -'

'Under _what authority_ is SADOM sending -'

'Dad, you know as well as I do that there was nothing sanctioned about any expedition into DR Congo; I wasn't _sent_ , I volunteered for this entirely deniable operation, and let me tell you, you need to take this seriously. Prometheus Thane is alive. I saw him with my own eyes, and more pertinently his identity was confirmed by someone who _knows_ him.'

The folder was slowly and deliberately shut. 'How long have you been in contact with Eva Saida?'

It sounded like he'd just pieced it together, not that he'd known all along, but Albus had to force himself to unclench his fists by his side. 'Only this week.'

'You took leave from the Foundation, stopped doing good work for good people and instead to disappear off into the world with -'

'This _wasn_ _'t_ the plan, Dad!' Al threw his hands in the air. 'Are you going to listen to me, _trust_ me this time?'

That stopped Harry short, like he'd started a tumble into old habits and had to catch himself. At last Al saw the tension flicker in his face, a hint of shame in there, and he sat back. 'I'm sorry. Please explain.'

'She's been working with SADOM for a lot of the last few years. She thought she was going to get a pardon, or at least political protection, and that it was almost over, but _then_ the Red Manticore situation sprung up, _and_ Thane. I wasn't planning on disappearing with her to fight another secret war. I _thought_ I was getting time off so I could figure out my _life_.' _Our life, perhaps. Who knows, now._

When Harry made a small noise of frustration, it didn't sound like it was directed at him. 'Of course she's been working for SADOM,' he muttered. 'Roux lied to my face…'

'You've been hunting her?'

Now Harry scowled. 'I've been keeping an eye out for her since she disappeared. Unofficially. For _you_. But she's kept out of my sight.'

Al faltered. 'I'm sorry.'

A sigh. 'I thought you and I were better at this.'

'I think you and I are doing a really good job of assuming the worst about each other,' Al admitted. 'But you need to know, Dad, I'm not starting a shadow war or my own personal vendetta against Prometheus Thane. The others know, they deserved warning, but Rose smacked sense into us all. Reminded us that we don't need to fall back into old habits.'

'It would be a terrible idea in some cases,' said Harry. 'There are officials out there who will _explode_ if it looks like Scorpius is going near Prometheus Thane again; a lot of people were unhappy he slipped away from prosecution at the end of the Thorn War, but Draco's evidence against Lillian was too valuable. If he so much as sneezes the wrong way, someone is going to accuse him of having always been a loyalist to Thane. And as for Selena…'

'Much the same, I know. I'm here to _show_ things are different this time, Dad. To make sure you knew about Thane, to make sure you knew it was serious. Transparency.'

'I appreciate that.' Harry grimaced. 'How is Saida?'

Al's expression twitched. 'I don't know. It feels like the same things happening again; nothing can be properly considered until the crisis is over, and yet again a chance has been snatched from her hands. Our hands.'

'She's in the country? You don't need to tell me where…'

He bobbed his head. 'She snuck in. I'm sorry.'

'Al, you need to stop acting like I couldn't _possibly_ understand how or why you'd break the law to do what you felt was right. Remember all the stories about me, and remember that five years ago I might have believed we were all _better_ until yet another crackpot turned the law into their own weapon.' His father's eyes went distant. 'I have not made the changes to the world I wished I had.'

Al wasn't sure what to say to that. 'I know you've not been as involved with the GWA security council. You probably should be. The Red Manticores, Thane…'

'Thane is still a British citizen. Even if this is a trick or a ghost - I know, I know, more things in heaven and earth, but I will find out for _myself_ , Al.' Harry lifted a hand. 'What's Saida's next plan?'

'I don't know,' Al admitted. 'My plan is to stop her from disappearing just yet.'

'That's a good plan. Even if this thing with Thane is a trick, she knows the Red Manticores' upper echelons better than most.' Harry stood, moving to one of the filing cabinets along the wall, and began rummaging in a drawer. 'Am I going to get calls to bring her in and extradite her?'

'If people realise where she is? Probably.' Al winced. 'I would hope you -'

'That woman lost her chance at a pardon because of politics,' Harry said flatly. 'So far as I'm concerned, your forgiveness is my forgiveness. I'll look into my options, okay?'

He slumped. 'Thanks, Dad.'

'Can I ask you to sit tight for a bit while I try to get to the bottom of all of this? If we're going to do things differently, Al, we can start with _both_ of us being open with each other.'

Al nodded, answer cut short by the chime from his pocket magic mirror, and he pulled it out with an apologetic glance. Only words spun through the misty mirror surface as he snapped the lid open, and he squinted. 'It's Lily. She must have realised I'm back in the country.'

' _She_ had a hell of a time in New Mexico, too. Not just Scorpius,' said Harry gently.

'You're right. Truth be told, the whole New Mexico thing… got away for me.' Al stood with a grimace. 'I should go see her.'

'I'm due proper meetings with the security council; I've got representatives from MACUSA in the country for briefings and sit-downs. I have the power to invoke the lead if this is Thane. With Tackleton involved, too, it gives Britain more relevance than the Yanks.' Harry pulled a folder from his cabinet, holding it so Al couldn't see the header. 'We'll talk later.'

It was a better meeting on matters of life and death than Al had had with his father in a long time, so he left it there. Lily kept a house near St. Mungo's with a couple of her friends from Healer training, paying nominal rent even if these days she spent more time abroad with the Foundation. The two of them had been making a good team, which surprised even Al himself, used to being the third wheel of the Potter siblings.

So it was without apprehension that he Floo'd himself from the Ministry, without the hint of guilt that had yet to leave him in matters of his family. He burst out of the fireplace in Lily's small living room, the house every inch the picture of student digs, and wrapped his sister in a warm hug. 'Sorry I didn't come sooner.'

Lily returned the hug tightly. 'You're always rocking around being busy and adventurous, big brother. I understand.' She pulled back and gave him an odd smile. 'I would have waited, but there's someone I think you should meet.'

Her grip had been a bit too firm, and while her smile wasn't insincere there was something under the surface, something he couldn't place until he looked across the living room and saw someone else there. For a heartbeat he didn't recognise her, then Lily said, 'This is Isabella Castillo.'

… _you saw that witch who just walked in, the late arrival trying_ way _too hard to be intimidating in a lot of leather?_

Auror Castillo got to her feet and stuck out a hand. 'We didn't get properly introduced in South Africa, Mister Potter.'

'Yeah,' said Lily with a hint of nervous laughter. 'It was kind of weird to hear you two had run into each other on a _business_ trip.'

Al found his spine locking up as he shook the hand. Both of them gripped far too tight. 'I know of you by reputation, Auror Castillo.'

'Isa was with me in New Mexico. Us. With us - with the MACUSA security sent down,' Lily babbled. 'She was a big help when everything went to hell, especially in the evac; I'd have had hell treating Scorpius if she hadn't got us to a proper facility as quickly as she did. We didn't get much chance to catch up before she had this _meeting_ in South Africa…'

'And now you're here,' said Al blandly.

'My boss has got meetings with the DMLE,' said Castillo. 'Probably with your father. I get to play aide and info source, seeing as I'm something of an expert on the situation.' She made him let go first, kept her gaze on him. There was something in her eyes which reminded Al uncomfortably of Eva; that same cool control, level temperament, that same intensity. He suspected neither woman would thank him for the comparison.

'Oh, yeah, there's a _situation_ ,' said Lily too quickly. 'Situations need tea; if people need tea?'

Castillo's expression softened as she looked over. 'Coffee?'

Lily relaxed at last with an eye-roll. ' _Yanks_.' But she squeezed Al's arm before she left for the kitchen.

'You know, I'm from Kentucky -'

Castillo was not cut off by the door shutting behind Lily. The moment his sister was gone, Al grabbed her by the lapels of her leather jacket and hauled her nose-to-nose with him. 'You're going after _my sister_ because of me?' The anger was an old friend, ancient embers in his belly firing up, and the warmth was welcome.

'I'm in the country for work,' said the Auror, voice flat and calm. 'Figured I'd check in on Lily since I left in a hurry. I ain't _going after_ nobody.'

The heat in Al's gut flared up, and he glanced down to see not just a wand prodded into his belly, but one with a gleaming tip, the warning of a promise of magics. He did not let go. 'You're not just here for coffee, and I wasn't broughthere for a nice chat.'

'You're right there. But I'm here to talk. Are you, or do you want to try posturing some more before I blast you across this room? I mean, I doubt Lily'd like that but I ain't normally so tolerant of folks in my face like this, so you can only push a girl _so_ far.'

He let go with a shove, but Castillo was steady on her feet, the wand disappearing from her grasp before he could keep track of it. 'Then talk.'

'Sheer chance I met your sister in New Mexico right before we passed each other in Cape Town,' she said. 'I didn't know you were still running with Saida at the time.'

'Before last week I hadn't seen her in five years,' Al growled.

'Maybe. Maybe not. Fact is, your sister's a good person and her brother's in cahoots with a known crook and murderer. That _alone_ _'s_ enough to get my attention.'

'You're _actually_ implying you're here for my sister's protection; that I'm _endangering_ her -'

'That your associations are endangering her. You got a _fascinating_ reputation and record, Mister Potter. But nothing so fascinating as your constant defence and protection of that woman.'

'That woman is a _good person_ -'

'That woman _murdered_ my partner and three other US citizens for the sake of the magical _drug_ trade; it don't take a hero to want to stand against world domination -'

' _Coffee_.' Lily near-kicked the kitchen door open, clutching a tray of hot drinks. 'Also that door is _super_ thin, just so you know.' The two exchanged a guilty glance as she put the tray on the coffee table. 'Isa, I trust my brother and I trust his judgement, at least when it comes to keeping me safe. I am not about to be murdered in my sleep by Eva Saida because Al turned a blind eye to her. _Al_ , Isa isn't using me to get to you. We were friends before this came up.'

Al watched his sister fight to hide her expression behind a sip of her tea, but he could spot the hint of blush on her cheeks, and tried to not roll his eyes. _Oh, like this needed to be more complicated._ 'Then why am I _here_?'

'I wanted the measure of you,' said Castillo. 'Because you had to be stupid, complicit, or ignorant.'

Lily winced. 'Isa -'

'I did my reading.' She reached into her jacket and pulled out a folder that could only have fit inside a magically enlarged pocket. 'Saw your history with Saida, saw how much you protected her. You're the only reason she didn't get locked away for _good_ right after the Lethe outbreak.'

'She has _changed_ -'

'Perhaps.' Castillo did not sound convinced, and tossed the folder on the coffee table. 'I shouldn't even be showing you this. Whole world of trouble. But turning over a new leaf don't stop the old side from being black as night. Changing her behaviour don't count as justice.'

Al glanced down. 'What is this?'

'It were funny,' said Castillo, not sounding in the slightest bit amused, 'that not a single one of her victims were called to Niemandhorn for her pardon hearing. Not a single investigator who worked her old cases. Not a single person who could account for her crimes _before_ the Thorn War. But they were going to see if she deserved to be pardoned for them crimes. Does that sound fair to you? Balanced to you?'

'I am not an idiot,' said Al slowly. 'I don't pretend she was just misguided, or _just_ manipulated by Thane -'

'Oh, I know full well what happens when you get a kid in a bad situation and raise them to think only of your version of right and wrong, and there's a whole mess of debate on what to do with offences committed as a heavily-influenced minor. But everything that went down between her and me on US soil happened when she were over seventeen. Open the folder.'

He glanced at Lily. 'Why did you bring my sister into this?'

'Because I think it'll do you good to have a second pair of eyes to look at this, a second pair of eyes you trust but who ain't been wrapped up in your history. So you can't just walk away and say I'm being a bitch, or manipulative, or that it don't matter. I ain't doing this to _hurt_ you, Mister Potter. I'm trying to show you the truth.'

Al put down his tea and flipped the folder open with a veneer of indifference. He'd half-expected a horrific photograph first, some memory of evil, but instead he was greeted by a picture of Eva herself. She looked closer to how she did when they'd met seven years ago, though the image was grainy and looked like a blown up picture from some surveillance photography. She stood at a door, glancing to her left, that intense frown on her face, unaware of whoever had snapped the shot. The document it was paper-clipped to was a simple record, whatever basic information MACUSA had gathered on her, followed by a list of offences. It was not short.

He looked at one entry. 'Jefferson Munro. That was your partner?'

'We'd got word ahead of time on a run to the border town where their smuggler's Portkey was waiting, set up an ambush, killed all Disapparition. But Thane was a smart son of a bitch; their arrival came with a big old blast of stunning magic that turned it into chaos. People scattered, it went mad, Jeff got her cornered in a side-alley. Backup - me - were real close, hot on their heels, so when she got the better of him in the fight she didn't just Stun him, she slit his throat with dark magic. Left him bleeding out on the alley so I had to stop to help him, so I didn't chase her.' Castillo's expression didn't shift as she spoke. 'It were effective. She slipped away and Jeff died on me before I could get him to the evac Portkey.'

Lily looked at Albus, aghast. 'That _can_ _'t_ be how it went down -'

'I believe you,' said Albus, failing to swallow the ashen taste in his mouth. 'She would have done that. Not to be vicious, but to slow you down and help herself escape.'

'And not care who she killed in the process.' Castillo rolled a shoulders. 'Two of the other murders were a rival drugs-running squad. Nobody ain't gonna weep for them, but it still ain't _justice_.'

'Locking her up now wouldn't be justice.'

He watched as the Auror tensed. 'I don't think that's for you to decide, Mister Potter.'

'It's not for _you_ to decide, either.' He straightened. 'So I ask again, Auror Castillo; why are you _here_? Hoping I'll break and hand her over?'

'I _know_ she left South Africa, and she were last seen in your company; she's gotta be in the UK -'

'You're in the country for a _briefing_ , Auror,' Al snapped. 'You're here to inform British law enforcement of important matters, not to conduct your own off-the-books investigation and _witch hunt_! A title and a badge might work on the average wizard, but you have _no jurisdiction here_ , you have no means of compelling me to assist you!'

Castillo's lip curled. 'I ain't throwing the book at you, Potter. I'm trying to make you see, trying to make you do the decent thing -'

'I am _sorry_ for your loss. But the decent thing to do is _not_ to betray a woman who has saved my life countless time; who saved _dozens_ of lives in the Thorn War -'

'And who hasn't answered for all the lives she _took_!'

'Stop it!' That was Lily, slamming her mug of tea on the table so hard it spilt. 'Al, I don't know how you can be on your high horse -'

'I am _not_ -'

'And _Isa_!' Here she rounded on the Auror, hands on her hips. 'I believe you came to see me, but don't pretend you're not hoping I'll put pressure on Al. You can cut that shit out _right_ now, or you can go and you can _stay_ gone.'

Castillo's jaw clenched, but after a moment she lifted her hands. 'I meant what I said. But fine. I said my piece.' She looked to Lily. 'We're staying at the Luminas Hotel. I still got a few days in the country. If you want to - I'll be there. Find me, leave a message, I'll be around.' The tension switched as she spoke, faltering and hesitant, then she straightened her jacket. 'I'm gonna go. You can keep that file, Mister Potter, if you'll do me the kindness of not telling my boss I handed it over.'

Al almost threw it at her, but he found himself frozen as Auror Castillo disappeared through the Floo.

Lily tossed her hands in the air. 'Well, that was five kinds of fucked up.'

He slumped onto an armchair, suddenly exhausted. 'I'm sorry, Lil.'

'For the record, I think you're both being arseholes.' She perched on the armrest next to him, and gingerly reached for the folder. 'This was a long time ago.'

'It doesn't make people less dead.' He scrubbed his face with his hands. 'It doesn't say anything I didn't sort of know, though I never knew the _specifics_ …'

'It's a bit different.' She pulled her hand back as if the folder was something odious, and squeezed his shoulder. 'I trust you, Al. And I know you've not got me in danger or anything like that -'

'I would _never_ have supported her pardoning, would never have had her for _lunch at the Burrow_ if I thought she was still dangerous, and I didn't reach that level of trust easily -'

'I _know_.' She gave an awkward, lopsided smile. 'I didn't realise you'd seen her again. She's why Scorpius gave you the time off, isn't she?'

He nodded stiffly. 'I thought it was over.'

'With someone like her, is it ever over? I care most of all about you being _happy_ , big brother.'

'I'm not sure I remember what that is any more.' Al winced. 'That came out melodramatic. I have been satisfied, I have been _content_ for a long time. But -'

'But everyone else made a life after the war. I've loved having you with us again, Al, and even _James_ has got over what happened. But it's like you're not comfortable in your own skin, and I don't think that's just about not having the right girl be around. What are you going to do, wander the Earth forever looking for wrongs to right? Because that's _all_ you've done for _seven years_ , one way or another.'

He didn't answer for a while, and when he did it was with a rough clearing of the throat and a wry smile. 'Why did you have to flirt with the girl who's my ex's _sworn enemy_?'

Lily gave an impish smirk. 'I guess I just followed my big brother's example on not letting anything in my love life be easy.'

Before he could snipe back, his enchanted mirror chirruped in his pocket, and with a sigh Al pulled it out to be greeted with the grim eyes of Scorpius Malfoy. He frowned. 'What's wrong?'

'Shit on top of shit, mate,' came Scorpius' muffled voice. 'It's Doyle. He's in trouble.'


	7. The Compass Round

**Chapter 7: The Compass Round**

'I keep thinking,' mused Rose as the four of them sat down around her coffee table, 'that we need a secret headquarters.'

' _I_ keep thinking we need some goddamn communication.' Selena gave Scorpius a flat look. 'Start explaining.'

Scorpius exchanged a glance with Albus that held unspoken complaints about women, and lifted his hands. 'Hey, the days of me being everyone's whipping boy are _over._ Take this up with Matt.'

'I will, once we pull his arse out of the fire, but I don't know what that fire _is_ yet.'

'You know as well as I do that he doesn't _just_ write bone-crunchingly boring books on the Chalice. He still does bone-crunchingly boring freelancing for Gringotts, follows bone-crunchingly boring leads on the old Templars, and does his own bone-crunchingly boring exploration and research. Sometimes he probably takes you out for bone-crunchingly boring dinners, but that's again on you -'

'Yes, yes, he's a very tiresome magic treasure hunter, but why do _you_ know about a problem before me?'

'Because we set this up about three years ago.' He rubbed the back of his neck. 'Remember when Al and I were in the Azores and ran into you two and had dinner?' Rose, of course, did not remember, because she must have been hundreds of miles away and three years ago Matt would have never sat down for dinner with her, but Selena and Al nodded. 'The Foundation was just settling into its post-war routines, and he was just starting to work on things which weren't the Chalice, so he asked for help. Apparently he does a lot of solo work, and sometimes it might be dangerous. All we did was set up a notification system. Before he goes off on somewhere on his own, especially if he thinks it's going to be risky, he sends a message to my nearest office with a deadline. If he doesn't contact that office in that time period, the message is opened, and it's supposed to contain details of where he's going, why, and with whom.'

Selena's expression flickered. 'Why _you_?'

Scorpius shrugged. 'He misses my dazzling charm? Probably because I have the international reach to almost always have someone within a few hundred miles of wherever he's gone. Because he didn't want to worry you by giving you a disaster letter every time he was going on a job. I think he didn't always trust you to not bust those letters open on principle the moment his back was turned. Honestly, I thought he was being a bit melodramatic because it's just sodding _books_ , it's never come up before.'

Al leaned forwards. 'What's the situation, then?'

'Brazil, Rio de Janeiro to be precise. He's meeting a fence, I've got a name and address, to buy some old diaries of an old Italian wizard which wound up on the black market.' Scorpius sighed. 'That's as much as he's told me; the deadline was two hours ago and he's not got in touch.'

'Rio,' said Rose, 'is a problem.' Selena looked confused, so she pressed on. 'If he's dealing with fences in the Brazilian black market, that'll mean he's gone off the grid so far as the local magical government is concerned. Illicit trade of anything and everything in the shanty towns of the city is rife; so rife the government tries to clamp down on all magical transport into and out of the area. Apparition isn't possible, Portkeys are closely regulated. If you're not going to a very select part of inner-city Rio, you can't get about magically. If he's run into trouble, he's likely to be on foot.'

'Of _course_ it's for some old bloody journals,' Selena complained. 'But I don't -'

'We're not just being paranoid,' Albus interrupted in a low voice, 'if we're worried about getting into trouble dealing with the black market at the same time the Red Manticores are smuggling old relics and artifacts across the globe.' Everyone sobered at that, and he nodded. 'So let's contact the Brazilians, _and_ find ourselves a Portkey.'

'It took me twelve hours to get to the Rocky Mountains,' Rose said in a low, taut voice. 'Which is absolutely nothing compared to the travel restrictions we'll face getting into Rio. _Especially_ _…_ ' She winced. 'Selena, you know that the moment anyone wants to tighten up their borders, you get held up in customs for -'

'Ice ages,' said Selena, jaw tight.

'I can't move easily, either,' said Scorpius, scowling. 'The Red Manticore situation's got me watched, and the Ministry has _politely_ asked me to stay in the country. I like to upset them because screw that, I've not been arrested, but trying to go to Rio will give the DMLE _kittens_. Fat kittens that'll shit in my shoes.'

'So what _do_ we do?' snapped Selena. 'Sit and wait on the Brazilians?'

Rose sighed. 'I can try to pull some strings through work,' she said weakly, but considering this hadn't got her very far when she'd been scrambling to be at the side of Scorpius' hospital bed, she doubted it'd get her further now. 'Or we can -'

'Or we use someone who knows exactly how to procure and use an illegal Portkey.' Al lifted his eyes, voice calm. 'Shall I call her in?'

Scorpius sat up. 'Hang on,' he said, gaze landing on Rose. 'Are we saying you two and Eva are going to trot off to Brazil to try to save Matt from possible _mortal danger_?'

Selena's lips were pursed. 'I probably can't slip past notice right now.'

But Rose heard the unspoken question from Scorpius, and reached over to take his hand. 'We'll be fine.'

'You have _no way_ of knowing - you _can_ _'t_ -'

' _Scorp_.' If she could, she'd have instilled in her voice enough force to make him drop the topic for good. Instead, she could make him drop it while they were in public.

Al stood and straightened his jacket. 'I'll go see Eva, then. See what she can put together.'

'I think you and I could do with her wand, not just her travel aid,' Rose said.

Selena glanced between her and Scorpius with a suspicious glint in her eye, but also got up. 'I'm going to see if I at least _know_ anyone in Rio who can be of use.'

And again their friends left in good order, leaving Scorpius exploding to his feet once the door was shut. 'You _cannot_ be serious, Rose.'

She narrowed her eyes at him. 'I'm completely serious.'

'We have _no_ idea what danger Matt's run into, it could well be the Manticores, it could be _Thane_ , and you're proposing you go barging in there when you should be at _home_ , in your condition -'

'I'm _pregnant_ , Scorpius, I'm not _ill_.' She stood to face him, hands on her hips. 'I'm only _weeks_ along. It doesn't make me any slower, it doesn't make me any more vulnerable -'

'Of course it does!' he sputtered. 'It - you - you're taking risks for -'

'I am taking risks for me, and I am taking risks for _Matt_ , and you can't stop me from going.'

He dropped his hands, shoulders slumping. 'I can ask you to not. If something happens -'

'It'd be awful if something happened _anyway_ ; I never intend on getting myself blasted or killed when going into a crisis.' _Except for that one time with Raskoph._ 'Even if I were an Auror or an Enforcer I wouldn't be obligated yet to tell my boss or to go on light duties!

'That's different, that's professional work, that's not you shooting off across the globe to risk yourself to save your _ex-boyfriend_ -'

' _Don_ _'t_.' Her jaw tightened. 'Don't throw Matt in my face like this is about fidelity and trust to put me off-balance. Yes, I have to go help him, because it's _Matt_ , because despite everything, despite barely talking to him in five years, he is _important_ to me. Sometimes I'm allowed to have illogical duties and burdens, too! And you don't get to freak out and shut down about me being pregnant, fail to talk about it or what's bothering you for _days_ , scuttling off to Malfoy Manor, and then act like I'm the unreasonable one you have to control.'

'Me processing my feelings is different to you putting yourself in harm's way.' But he was subdued at that, shoving his hands in his pockets. 'In harm's way, when I can't be there.'

'I won't be alone. I'll have Al, I'll have Eva. The best backup we have.'

He stared across the big, open-plan flat, at the tall windows beyond which gloomy spring skies loomed, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse. 'I didn't mean to be _controlling_ you,' Scorpius said awkwardly. 'I don't - I wouldn't -'

A stab of guilt suggested she might have picked more laden words than she intended, and Rose slid across the room to reach for his hand. 'You're always allowed to worry. But this is something I have to do.'

'I understand.' He swallowed hard, and only now looked her properly in the eye. 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry I've withdrawn, I'm sorry I've panicked.' He drew a shuddering breath. 'I want to do what's right by you, and by the world, and by our child, and I don't know what that _is_. But I _also_ don't want you endangering yourself because you're still carting around a shedload of guilt about Matt.'

'That… is a fair concern. But I'm not doing this to try to make things right by Matt, I don't _think_. This isn't some big, dangerous effort at making amends. I gave up on that after I jumped out of a window, I promise.' She squeezed his arm, grimacing. 'But there's a reminder you don't get to walk around like you're the only one of us with a dark cloud over your head.' She pressed on before he could protest, interrupt. 'And if we're going to do anything about Thane, about the Manticores, it can be about how the past still holds sway over us, or it can be about us fighting to get free of it, and fighting for a _future_ without those same shadows.'

He looked thoughtful rather than defeated, contemplative rather than combative. 'If the world will let us. I'm expecting a summons by the DMLE at any moment; Selena isn't much better off; nor's Al so long as his star's shackled to Eva's.'

'And we can help _them_. As for us, when I get back, it's time for something we should have done a long time ago: we're talking about Malfoy Manor.'

'Oh, good, a reason to hope you get shanked in Rio.' But his smile was sad, tired. 'I don't like you going. But I wouldn't have liked it a month ago. So I'm going to trust you, Rose, and I'm going to trust Al, and I'm even going to trust Eva bloody Saida again. And you can go save that complete pillock of your ex-boyfriend.'

'The pillock you looked after these past three years.'

The corners of his eyes creased at her unspoken question. 'I didn't do that for him. I did it for _you_.'

Her breath caught at that, for once faltering on something that wasn't lurching dread or guilt, and she tilted her husband's face down for a gentle, lingering kiss. 'It's almost as if, Scorpius Malfoy, you're not completely rotten.'

'Ugh, I've been trying to put you off me all these years.' But his frown was anguished, apprehensive. 'We made a big deal of our new rule being " _where you go, I go_ ", but I don't think we've ever kept it. So you better remember our old rule didn't _actually_ get broken.' He pulled her to him, and this time the kiss wasn't gentle but enough to have her clutching at his shirt for balance, for breath, and when he let her go his eyes were blazing. 'Come back to me.'

She had to steel herself to catch her words, but they were no less sincere, no less intense for the effort it took to utter them. 'Every time.'

§

Metal shrieked as Eva slid the hatch to the shipping container shut behind them, and darkness reigned until Rose sparked a light from her wand and said, expression flat, 'Now what?'

'I haven't just trapped us in a giant crate. Now, we wait.' At their looks, Eva reached up and traced a finger along the ritual markings etched onto the inside of the crate, only dimly visible in the gloom. 'This entire container has been prepared with enchantments and rituals. We're not waiting for a Portkey; this _is_ a Portkey. More than that, it's enchanted to observe the ebbs and flows of the magic across the borders to breach them. The moment any international Portkey magic is sensed, we'll jump to a secure location, as far as we can get. Then the cycle continues. Step by step until we get to Rio. This way we don't need to wait until we get security clearance from border control; we're piggy-backing off other people's transports, any of them.'

Rose, despite herself, looked impressed. 'This would give my office headaches for days.'

'What's our ETA?' asked Al.

'Hard to say, but estimations come up to about three hours.' At Rose's look, Eva shrugged. 'There is literally no means of us getting across the world faster without being able to enchant our own Portkey. And if your office can't do it…'

'Fine.' Rose remained mostly without expression, and reached into her backpack - that trusty, magically enlarged haversack from their original adventures it looked like she'd busted out of storage - to pull out a file. 'Do either of you know Rio?'

Al shook his head. 'I know some parts of Brazil. They got hit pretty hard when the Circle of Thorns went down; a few pockets refused to go without a fight. Some of the first work I did for Scorpius was out there. But that wasn't in Rio.'

'For being the capital, the Thornweavers never got much foothold in Rio. It's hard to have a flourishing criminal underworld under an oppressive regime,' Eva said dryly. 'I popped in and out a few times and I know some of the movers and shakers in the area but I don't know the _streets_.'

'Then we'll have to hope my company's security clearance means we've got good records.' Rose bent her head to focus on the folder.

Eva glanced at Al, eyebrow raised. He only shrugged again, a little hapless, but anything they could say was forestalled by the sudden jerk of the shipping container, and then that swirling, lurching sense of the Portkey activation.

Rose swore the moment they settled, clutching her bench. 'Is that going to keep happening?'

'And without warning.'

'What have you even told your company, Rose, about time off?' said Al.

'Officially I'm conducting one of our spot inspections of international border security.' Rose's expression didn't change. 'I'm learning a lot.'

'If you want to close down these loopholes, then remember how much you need them right now,' said Eva.

'Don't worry. White Wands have always found that trying to control international travel as much as countries do since the war is a futile endeavour which costs money and time and doesn't stop the people we actually _want_ to clamp down on. But it does give governments great excuses to hike up various taxes on travel.'

'And this,' sighed Eva, 'is the brave new world we fought for.' Al gave her a startled look at that, and she shrugged. 'I've found over the last five years that what most of the upper echelons of governments want, and what's best, often have little in common.'

'Whose definition of "best"?' said Rose with a hint of acidity, not looking up from her paperwork. 'Yours?'

'I would reel off names,' Eva said, voice perfectly level, 'but that would be implicating multiple high-ranking law enforcement officials you've _undoubtedly_ worked with in the past five years. You recall that situation with the missing children in Beirut the world wrung its hands over and absolutely nobody did anything about? That wouldn't have been stopped if people hadn't made deals behind closed doors, shared information, and then sent people like _me_ in.'

Rose hesitated at that, and did at last glance up. 'That was you?'

Eva looked away. 'Amongst others. But that's not my point. The point is doing things the legal way gets very hard if you care about what happens beyond your own borders these days.'

'That was a _lot_ of children brought back to their families,' said Rose quietly.

'More didn't make it. Some dark magic is on its own level of evil.'

'They never did catch the wizard who did it,' Albus said, and she could feel his eyes on her.

She shrugged. 'Nobody said anything about taking him alive.' Trials, she knew, were perhaps even messier than international cooperation, and sometimes, just sometimes, what people deserved and the lines between good and evil were _very_ clear.

Rose lowered her paperwork and bit her lip. 'I'm sorry. I'm tense about Matt and I'm taking it out on you.'

Eva shrugged, still hanging onto one of the leather hand-holds dangling from the ceiling. She found it more comfortable in the lurching of Portkey travel than risking being catapulted out of her seat. 'I want him safe, too.' They had never been close, but they'd bonded when they did come together; fighting together across Brillig Island, and she'd respected him tenfold more for that he, unlike her, had risked infection and death for that deed. He'd been the one to put aside all other reservations and trust her on the mission to rescue Selena, and she knew this unspoken connection went both ways, or he would never have loaned her the sword she'd needed so much during the Thornweaver attack in Cape Town.

'And,' Rose said, not without difficulty, 'I'm glad you're here. I don't know a better fighter.'

Eva just nodded at that, looking away. Words for such honesty did not come easily; she found Rose Weasley an intense but occasionally unpredictable factor outside of fights, probably the one of the Five she'd found herself to have the least grasp of as time went by, and time away had not made that easier. Selena was all masks with a predictable core, Matt she found she understood, with Scorpius she shared a certain rotten core of guilt, and Al…

…Al cleared his throat, and gestured her further down the shipping container. Uncertain, she followed him, aware of Rose burying her nose deeper into paperwork to avoid overhearing. 'There's something I should tell you,' he said in a low voice once they were stood almost consumed in shadow.

She looked at his face and said, 'is this the right time?'

'I met Isabella Castillo. Turns out she was one of the Americans on the New Mexico relief mission Scorpius and my sister were on. Lily and her hit it off. She's in the UK now with security briefings. She came to see Lily and… I can assume asked to speak to me.'

'Of course she did,' said Eva, a detached part of her marvelling at how numb her gut was at such a prospect. 'She must despise the notion I have any protection from the Potter family.'

'She seemed to think I needed enlightening.' He reached into his bag and pulled out a manila folder. 'She gave me this. I don't want it.'

Eva didn't take it off him, but she did bend down a corner to confirm it was what she thought it was. 'Have you read it?'

'Not properly -'

'Then how do you know if you don't want it?' She met his gaze. 'I doubt there's anything inaccurate in there.'

Al scowled. 'She gave this to me to try to drive a wedge -'

'Maybe she did. But a law enforcement officer doesn't have to be a lunatic blinded by a vendetta to hate me, Al. She just needs to have _met_ me in the line of duty. And regardless of her motivations, perhaps you _should_ read it.' She could taste something acrid in her mouth, and swallowed down. 'There's a lot we haven't talked about.'

His frown deepened. 'So perhaps we _talk_.'

'That's not unfair. Some things I should say. But -' Her gaze flickered down to the folder, and she hesitated. _There are some things I_ _'d rather you learnt while I didn't look you in the eye._ 'I'm sorry this got your sister involved.'

'Lily's a grown-up and can fend for herself. I'm more worried about _you_.'

'Why? Because I'm facing the consequences of my actions?' Eva said in a low, dull tone.

'Because this has every chance of turning into a witch hunt against the person you _used_ to be,' he hissed. 'And I won't stand for it.'

Eva reached out again, but this time it was to push the folder back, press it against his chest. 'Have a good read of that, remember this is only a _snapshot_ of the things I did before I met you, and maybe _then_ have a think of how far you'll stand for me,' she said, and before he could reply she'd turned away, headed back down the shipping container to sit on the bench across from Rose.

He didn't follow her from out of the shadows as they continued to trundle their way across the world to yet another crisis that meant they didn't have to think of all their past sins.

§

Advantages of staying in a hotel paid for by her paper included a modicum of privacy, so Selena almost dropped her tea when the Floo burst to life and out, surrounded by swirling emerald flames, stepped Scorpius Malfoy with a shovel over his shoulder. 'We've got work to do.'

She scrabbled for self control, sipped her tea, and drawled, 'We're burying your issues?'

'The opposite!'

'Digging up trouble so you can pretend you don't feel wholly impotent with your wife rushing off into danger?'

' _Exactly_.' Without irony, Scorpius sauntered over. 'And you're the only one I can trust to not have me locked up for this, not to mention you've got your own little problem of impotence to deal with. So how about we play allies instead of scoring points?'

Her brow furrowed. 'I'm not sure how that works.'

'If you're not pissed off Matt left his emergency precautions with _me_ , and if you're not pissed off he's in trouble when last you knew he was just doing boring research, and if you're not pissed off you can't go _after_ him, then you're not the Selena Rourke I know and… know.'

She sipped her tea again. 'I'm sure if they're _smuggling_ their way across the world we could have snuck out with them.'

'Perhaps, but if the DMLE is keeping tabs on me with the Thane thing, then I bet they're keeping tabs on you while you're in the country. It sucks but we can't afford to slow them down.'

'Scorpius, stop trying to make me feel better or I'll beat you _with_ the shovel. What's going on?'

He let the shovel rest on the polished floor in a way she was sure would make a dent and get added to her bill. At least she wasn't paying. 'We're going grave robbing.'

She put down her tea and folded her arms across her chest. 'I've got to give you credit, Scorpius Malfoy. You never fail to escalate in the most unexpected and stupid way. So, where is Thane buried?'

'How did you know?'

'Who the _fuck_ else are you going to dig up? My only other option was that you'd finally snapped and it was time to build a throne of bones out of the remains of Malfoy ancestors.'

'Yeah, no, I think my grandfather might still be gooey, so let's not.'

'You know if Thane's body is still in his grave, he's going to be gooey.'

Scorpius shouldered the shovel. 'So it's a lose-lose. Coming?'

Selena glanced out the window. It was gone ten o' clock, almost perfect time for skulking around a cemetery without being noticed. 'Let's hope the DMLE isn't paying _that_ close attention to us so long as we're within British borders. I'll get changed.'

It was by his Apparition they left the hotel room, all the better to come and go without being noticed, to be dragged through the night-clad skies of England and emerge so close to a hedge that twigs stabbed into Selena's hair and neck. On instinct she reeled back, swatting, only for Scorpius to grab her arm and hiss, 'Quiet!'

'I will _not_ , your steering is _atrocious_ -'

'I needed to get as close to the verge as possible without breaching the barriers, and I don't know if anyone keeps track of this place so will you _pipe down_?'

She repressed a shiver and looked around. A bright moon outshone the stars to smother the night in silver, showing for the moment little more than a country lane and the tall hedgerow Scorpius had almost hurled them into. The rolling hills on the other side glinted here and there with sparks of life from low houses in the distance, but she didn't recognise the terrain,with its gentle tumbles and sharp inclines. 'Where are we?'

'Lake District.' Scorpius glanced up and down the lane, before turning to the hedge. 'Specifically, the outskirts of the old Thane family home.'

'I thought Thane never lived in Britain?'

'Not unless you count Hogwarts. His grandfather ruined the family by squandering the fortune on Grindelwald's cause, and they left the country. But nobody wants to buy an old, run-down wizards' home; Muggles find them creepy as a rule, and it's considered gauche in the magical world. Either the purview of an upstart, _nouveau riche_ sort of half-blood, or you can't shake the stigma of the old owners.' There was a detached tilt to Scorpius' voice it didn't take a genius to read between the lines of. 'So they still own the place, it's just been left to rot for eighty years.'

'Own?'

He rolled a shoulder. 'Jericho Thane, Prometheus' father, is still alive. He lives in the States.'

'So how come Prometheus Thane is buried _here_?'

Scorpius pushed past her, she suspected so he couldn't see her face. 'It's what I reckon he would have wanted.'

She followed with a frown, realising that in all the insanity of the aftermath of Niemandhorn, she'd never stopped to think about what happened to Prometheus Thane's body. There'd been her mother's arrest and her own investigation and even the burial of Nat Lockett to contend with; _Thane_ had not given her reason to pause. This felt like a very serious oversight now. 'I didn't know you organised it.'

'Somebody had to, and he didn't get on with his father,' Scorpius said in a rather taut voice, walking down the length of the hedge. 'He never considered the US home, either. And you know as well as I do that there are rules about burials on Hogwarts grounds.'

'Yes, rules against people who tried to _wipe out_ Hogwarts getting the honour of being buried there when people who died to _save_ it don't.' That was an old anger, and one which seemed to take them both unawares, enough to push Scorpius into silence. So Selena glared at the back of his head and dropped her voice as she asked, 'So why didn't you Apparate right in and why do you need the shovel?'

'Last I was here there were some minor security wards. Enough to be set off by any spells. So we're doing this the old-fashioned way.' He stopped at a gap in the hedge and stuck his head in. 'Here.'

They slipped through the hedge and clambered over a half-broken fence to land in the ramshackle grounds of the run-down home of the Thane family. These were no grand grounds of a mansion the like of which Selena had seen of the truly old families of the country, but it had clearly once been a great country house in its own way. Now the roof had fallen into disrepair, broken windows showed dusty and scarred interior, and the lawn itself was a mess of weeds and overgrown wilderness.

She looked at Scorpius' face and saw there the echoes of another old family with its symbols turned to ash. 'Lead on,' she whispered. It was not, for once, the time to be sardonic.

Nothing stirred at their arrival, from nature to magic, and it was with some relief she noticed Scorpius was not wholly confident in his surroundings or in finding his way. But he led her around the side of the house to a quieter corner of the grounds, tidier if still overgrown, weeds and ivy crawling up a wooden pergola that stood guard over a gravestone. The worn stone still shone brighter than the walls, but it was to the markings that Selena looked.

 _Just a name and dates. At least there_ _'s no sentiment here._ 'How's the ground?'

Scorpius knelt before the gravestone. 'If this has been disturbed, it's not recent.'

'Do you have any idea how long it would take for it get this overgrown?'

'Nope. You?'

'Do I look like I know weeds?'

Scorpius sighed, rolled up his sleeves, and picked up the shovel. 'Then let's stop acting like horti-fucking-culturalists and get to it.'

'Sure, except for the implied _we_ ,' said Selena, and pretended she was keeping watch while he did all the work.

It took a long time to dig up a grave, and a whole hour before Scorpius finally spoke, rather breathless. 'So what _is_ Matt looking into in Brazil?'

She scowled. 'Buggered if I know what his nerd work sends him to.'

'Wow. _That_ _'s_ a response from _old_ Selena if ever there was one.' He stabbed the shovel in the ground for a break and wiped his brow. 'So you two argued.'

'We did not.'

'So you two didn't speak to _avoid_ an argument.'

She wrinkled her nose at him. 'Keep digging, Malfoy.'

'I need a break. You can take a shift, or we can talk.' She didn't move, so he braced his elbows on the shovel's handle. 'Remember how you and I say we're the only people we can be really _awful_ around?'

'So awful I'm starting to think that shovel's a great idea. So I can make you dig your own grave before I murder you.'

'There's trouble between you two, then.'

'The trouble is that he's got _into_ trouble without me having the slightest clue.' She sniffed. 'Look, all he's done the last five years is write books. Make his name more on the Chalice's hunt and destruction, and whatever the hell _else_ he slid out of the Templars' portfolio.'

'Has he been spending time with them?'

'They're not _really_ a thing; before de Sablé died there was some tidying up of loose ends and yes, he's sifted out the odd old secret of theirs, but he's still just a historian. It's not normally _that_ dramatic.'

'Then why did you fight?'

Selena scowled more. 'We didn't -'

'What _didn_ _'t_ you talk about, then? What was so awful you two, _you two_ , hid shit from each other?' Scorpius hefted his shovel. 'I pay some attention. You were always a good team. You didn't have to work at it, you just had to not be _stupid_ and it came naturally. So what's made you stupid?'

She looked away, the scowl fading for the heavy guilt she hoped the moonlight wouldn't shine down upon. 'He doesn't say it,' she said, softer. Scorpius proved why they were sometimes alike, because he said absolutely nothing, and even though she knew what was happening she found words rising to fill the silence. 'He wants to come home.'

There was another wait before Scorpius answered, but this sounded like he'd been hunting the right words. 'Five years is a long time to wander the world.'

'Five years isn't long enough for Britain to forget the name Rourke.'

'Will they ever?'

' _He_ suggested we leave,' she found herself snapping. 'He said I could take as long as I wanted, that he could do his work from wherever -'

'Which is why he's not said anything, I wager,' said Scorpius with a huff as he got back to digging. 'I mean, he's still a _man_ , if he's said he's not going to make a big deal out of this and yet it's bugging him he's totally going to walk around like a bear with a bad head and refuse to talk.'

'It's not his fault,' Selena said softly. 'I don't -'

She was saved by saying more because that was when the shovel hit the coffin. 'Show time,' Scorpius breathed.

It was not, in fact, show-time. Reaching the coffin still meant excavating it, and at this point Selena jumped in the hole to help scrape away the dirt, first with a rock, then with her hands as the work became more intricate. It was another full ten minutes before the coffin was cleared, the ebony wood shining once moonlight pooled into the grave around it, and she watched Scorpius as he cleared the dirt from the hinges. His own eyes shone in the gloom, shone with a mixture of apprehension and anticipation, and as he reached for the lid his hands shook.

'Whatever's going on,' she told him, 'we'll get to the bottom of this. We'll see him finished.'

The emotion betrayed on his face, stealing there like a thief before he caught and locked it away, was so plainly guilt she had to look away. 'I know,' said Scorpius instead, and opened the coffin.

It moved with a creak of metal hinges, with starlight rippling over the wooden surface, and the moon tumbled down into the open grave, into the open coffin, and filled all the empty space within. They both stared at the nothingness for long moments, long moments of heart-thudding chest pain and throat-burning breaths not breathed, until Selena managed, in a strangled voice, to speak.

'Bugger.'

* * *

 _A/N: So, uh, yet again, after a huge break, I slither back. I am not gonna make promises, because that's just not been helpful. I will say that I have quite a bit more of this written. I will say I held off on writing it until I had a more solid grasp of the plot, so I didn't start posting only to write myself into a corner where I couldn't go back and edit, or where I'd run into a brick wall. At last, the problem with this story isn't going to be, you know, the story._

 _I am, however, elbow-deep in studies. So why am I trying to finish this story **now** , you ask? Simply put, I need to write to blow off steam. To scratch the creative itch when stressed. This may mean a week or so may go by where I don't have time to write. It happens. But I have a little buffer (writing Chapter 13 at present) and a more solid plan, and I'll try to post once a fortnight or so. And maybe we can finish this dang story, huh?_


	8. This Uncertain Age

**Chapter 8: This Uncertain Age**

 _Just so you know, if you change your mind, ever, I_ _'ll be here. I will wait for you…_

 _Here lies Reynald de Sabl_ _é, born 1254, died…_

Thought and memory thudded and swirled through him; moments of his life in a kaleidoscopic swarm of colour and feeling.

 _I want to stop being haunted by Methuselah, and you are one of the few people in the world who makes me feel like that_ _'s even possible…_

His head thudded, every pound sending sparks in front of his darkened vision, every movement making it worse.

 _I_ _'m saying I want to be with you. I'm saying I want you with me, with everything that's coming. I want you with me in the chaos. I want you with me when the dust settles. I want you with me in all the choices we'll have to make…_

 _Long is the day and long is the night and long is the waiting of Arawn_ _…_

Aches and pains felt like they were drowning him, air rushing into his lungs as he opened his mouth to gasp for breath and through pain. He tried to stir but his arms were like lead, tried to open his eyes but they were too heavy.

 _What was the question? Can I follow you around the world_ _…_

 _Niccol_ _ò Catalina, born Florence, 1469, died circa 1528, location unknown…_

He coughed, tried to wipe spittle from his lips, but it was then he realised his hands weren't too heavy but bound; that he wasn't blind but blindfolded, and that the aches came from the chair he'd been tied to.

 _Just one more year, then we_ _'ll go home… just one more year, then we'll go home… I promise, I promise, just one more year_ …

'He's coming round,' said a low voice in a gravelly growl.

A hand yanked off the bag over his head, and even the glimpse of light in the gloomy room was enough to make him squint after all that darkness. Eyes burning, he gazed up at the speaker before him, a square-jawed, plain-faced wizard. 'Your Legilimency,' Matt croaked through a raw throat, ' _sucks_.'

Aggravation flashed through those dark eyes and the wizard straightened. This gave Matt half a chance to soak in his surroundings, and it was with limited relief he realised, with the look of the small hovel and the glimpses through the high windows, that he was still in the slums of Rio.

The relief died when his gaze landed on the figure behind the first wizard, leaning against a table in a gloomy corner, and he realised he had not imagined the face of Prometheus Thane.

'Leave him be, Niko,' said Thane.

The wizard called Niko stepped back and scowled at them both. 'I'm not the one who beats people to disrupt their Occlumency. You must be thinking of Loganach.'

Thane gave Niko an icy look and the wizard withdrew further, but before Matt could speak again Thane had stood and padded forward. 'Mister Doyle. You cannot have enjoyed the last few hours.'

'A re-run of my hopes, dreams, failings, and all the really _boring_ research I've done over the year?' Matt shook his head to fight to clear it, and to disguise his gauging that there were only two of them in the room. 'No, that's just Christmas dinner with the family.'

Thane hunkered down before the chair, bringing their eyes level. He looked more worn than Matt remembered, his voice throatier. 'I have always respected your mind, you know.'

'I wasn't sure you had a clue who I was, with your obsession over Scorpius.'

'You're the man who destroyed the Chalice of Emrys. Of course I know who you are.'

Matt smiled through gritted teeth. 'Was all of this for an autography?'

Thane's expression flickered. 'Niccolò Catalina. You have leads on his grave. Or you wouldn't be looking for what Gaspar was selling.'

'There are more important points,' Matt croaked, and looked him in the eye. 'Like you being _dead_.'

His smile was ghostly. 'I'm not the first to come back. Forget Scorpius; as I recall, _you_ were.'

'Not by much; even _Muggles_ can bring back the clinically dead. Scorpius had extenuating circumstances. What were yours?'

'I'm not the one being interrogated here.'

'By the quality of your Legilimency, neither am I.'

'There's nothing wrong with my Legilimency. I wanted to know about Catalina, and now I know. Renaissance Italian wizard who translated the lost fragment of the Emerald Tablet only to be buried with those translations. And now knowledge of that burial site is lost.'

'If you know all this, why are we talking?'

Thane's smile did not reach his eyes. 'I know everything you _know_ , Mister Doyle; about Catalina and a good deal more. Your embarrassment at your errors in that conference speech last month. Your recent effort to resolve issues with Rose Weasley; I'm impressed, I didn't know there was a murder conspiracy to save Scorpius. Your sister's upcoming wedding; no, _I_ don't think the husband-to-be sounds quite good enough either. And, of course, your recent relationship and lifestyle problems; how _does_ it feel to fight a war and lose the happily ever after -'

Matt slumped, jaw tight. 'What do you _want_?'

The fixed smile remained. 'I can, and have, extracted all manner of facts from your mind. Everything you _know_ on Catalina. But that's all it is; the cold, indisputable truths, from your perspective. Except there is more than that in your head, and I cannot extract your theories, your gut feelings; what you suspect, what you have derived, your hunches. I can go through the research myself, but that will take time and _you_ are the expert. You can tell me where to look.'

'But the Emerald Tablet isn't going to give you a lost plague or a resurrection device or power over death. It's for alchemical history nerds. Really not your department.'

'Sometimes those alchemical history nerds will pay _very_ well. Or anyone looking for a collectible.'

' _That_ _'s_ what this is about? Money?' Matt scoffed. 'The great Prometheus Thane _cheated death_ and then hunted _me_ down so he could make a pretty penny?'

'I tried to change the world. Fought and lost.'

Matt shook his head, chuckle low. 'You have me mistaken, _again_ , for Scorpius. I don't have some weird hero-worship of you. You're a thug and a mercenary and a murderer and I don't care if you want to pretend to be somehow elevated because you _sometimes_ decide you want to act the gentleman. You're a brute who leads even dumber brutes -'

He was cut off by a flash of movement and pain, head knocked to one side, and Thane rubbed his knuckles as he stood with a scowl. 'We can do this one of two ways, Mister Doyle. You give me a lead, or I turn up the heat.'

Matt heard the other wizard shuffle his feet. 'Prometheus -'

'Out, Argyris.' Thane's voice was like a whip-crack, and enough to send Niko Argyris out of the room without anything more than another mumble. With the door shut, Matt found Thane's face in his, tones turned to a low growl. 'I don't mean beating you until you break, though I could do that. I'd rather not. I'd rather not hunt down the people you care about and make them burn and bleed 'til you're begging me to stop with every secret you know. How does that lass of yours fancy paying for the sins of the mother?'

Matt's head snapped up, chest heaving from the burning within. 'Fine,' he rasped. 'You win. I've got a secret for you.'

Then his prosthetic hand swung around to crack into the side of Thane's head, solid metal hitting skull, and the other wizard went down. Hand free, Matt struggled out of the rest of his bonds to stand over the fallen wizard. 'I don't need to dislocate this thumb to slip out of restraints,' he snarled.

That was something which had come with time, a mastery of the living metal to let it move in ways beyond human joints. It was enchanted to act and move as flesh and blood and bone would, but with concentration and will it had been possible to force his hand thin, thinner than it should be, and wriggle out of rope. Now his stump ached with the effort and he did his best to push through it as he knelt over Thane and checked his pockets, finding his own wand and the sword and the papers he'd come for.

'So,' Matt mumbled, clutching his wand. 'Who the hell are you?'

But a dispelling charm did nothing, nor any of the other quick detection spells and then the door swung open. Matt whirled around to lash out a Stun which broke through Argyris' instinctive Shield, but only enough to stagger him. From the corridor beyond, the depths of the slum reaching further than he knew, he could hear shouts of surprise at the sounds of magic, and knew there were more than two of his enemies.

The windows were high, but not so high he couldn't throw himself out of them. It was like leaping from night to day, glass exploding around him before the air was knocked soundly out of his lungs as he landed in the stained, sun-soaked street. He lay there for a moment, gasping amid the sounds of surprise and confusion from Muggles in the street, back screaming at the impact.

Then from the building he'd burst from he heard a door swing open and the uttering of protection spells, and knew he had to run. He stood, a glance up and down the alleyway showing options, but he hesitated when figures streamed in at one end. They wore Muggle clothes -

And hesitation died at the spray of bullets they let loose, forcing him behind an abandoned packing crate. Either he'd run into someone else's trouble or Thane had hired locals, and now he was a sitting duck with wizards coming up behind him. Matt's hand found solid grip on the wall, and he hauled himself up to the low roof of the favela, ducking down from the gunfire. At least if the pursuing wizards had made it to the street they couldn't cast at him, but a bullet could still kill.

Surging above street level was like breaking the surface of the water, below him only greys and browns and the stink of the road. Up here, colour tumbled down and away from him across rickety rooftops, painted walls, falling away towards the centre of Rio and the shining sea beyond. If he was going to Apparate away, he needed out of this slum.

Only three feet separated this building from the next, a leap he cleared with ease. The next one along was taller, forcing him to jump up, grab crumbling masonry and haul himself onto the rooftop, rolling back to his feet and bursting onward. Direction was gone, sense was gone; all he had was away, away.

When a spell cracked inches past him and took out a laundry line, it was a mixed blessing. Good, because it meant the gunmen weren't there and he could hurl his wand back and throw a spell at his pursuers. Bad, because a glance over his shoulder showed four wizards leaping across the rooftops after him, and one of them was Prometheus Thane.

The next two buildings were tall, but leaned together to shade the street so deeply it was almost a step between rooftops, and after that a long drop to a wider road. He ducked under a Stun, hurled himself over the edge, and had to grab another laundry line to slow his descent, slipping from foothold to railing to foothold to hit the ground in a roll. Something stank as he landed on it, he almost hit a passerby, and now there were shouts in Portuguese he understood no words of but the surprise and outrage was plain. He couldn't disappear into a crowd; not here, not dressed as he was and pale as he was, but he could discourage spells.

Too many people were here. Too many people packed into tiny, decrepit buildings of crumbling masonry and failing amenities, and too few people to care or stop him if he slid into an alleyway barely a shoulder's width apart and scrambled to another rooftop, braced between the opposing walls. Either he could stay down below in the grimiest of Muggle worlds he'd seen, or he could rise above and actually use magic. It would have been an uncomfortable prospect if he weren't in danger of getting his head blown off.

Sunlight greeted him anew as he hit the roof, and he took a second to take in his surroundings, his direction. Most of the favelas looked the same to him, so only by the sea could he navigate easily, and now realised his mistake. Driven by easy access and the fall of the buildings, he'd started to curve, not bolt as directly out the neighbourhood as possible.

There was a thump from beside him and Matt reeled around, wand ready, to see one of the pursuing wizards land and roll beside him. He hadn't jumped to the road below and scrambled up; he'd leapt across, clearing an impossible distance, and Matt repressed an oath as he realised his mistake. How many below would notice a human jump a ridiculous gap above them, and of them, how many would act on it - and who would _care_ what these people had to say? The Statute, in this place, could be bent much further.

The wizard's spell-blast sent Matt reeling back as he tried to parry it, and he retreated further across the rooftop, bounded across to the next building, but his landing was shoddy and he fell. Scramble to his feet though he could, the wizard still advanced on him, wand whipping up, and he was too slow with his next Shield -

Then he was grabbed and yanked behind the nearby bright blue water-tank on the roof. The spell thudded harmlessly onto the spot he'd been a heartbeat before, then whoever had grabbed him was hurling retaliatory magics themselves, and as Matt flopped behind the water tank he allowed himself a moment to sputter for breath.

' _Rose_?'

She didn't answer, gaze set across the rooftop, pooling magic in her wand before her Stun went crackling out to thud into the enterprising hireling wizard's chest. Her hair was tied back, fresh freckles brought forth by the sunshine of all her travels, and though he'd seen her only days ago it still felt like a lifetime for their five years of separation. And while he despised the part of him that still felt a wave of revulsion at the sight of her, he despised even more the shadow within him that remembered loving her. 'The _hell_ are you doing here?'

She ducked back down. 'What does it look like? Saving _you_.' Her jaw set as she looked him over. 'Your warning system with Scorpius worked. We could get here quicker than legal reinforcements. You're lucky we checked rooftops from a high-up view -'

'It's not _luck_ my warning system included specific directions of where I'd gone,' he said through gritted teeth. 'Watch out; there's another three of them, that one was just eager, and Rose -' Matt grabbed her arm, forced her to look at him again. 'I'm not crazy. They're led by Prometheus Thane.'

She didn't look as astonished as she should. 'I was afraid you'd say that.' Then she ducked down at the spark of magic from the far building, and he felt the water-tank rock against him at the impact of spells.

The scarcest of glances showed Thane and the other two had caught up, themselves taking cover on the next rooftop. They'd dragged their fallen comrade out of the way, and now came an onslaught of magic at their position. 'This isn't going to hold!' Matt hissed, and he could see Rose already pumping protective magics into their cover. 'We can't just _stay_ here.'

'Just _wait_!'

'For -'

Then there was a fresh thud as not magic, but an entire water-tank flew from a rooftop to their left to crash into their assailant's cover. That sent the three scattering onto rooftops, and Rose stuck her head and wand over their tank to start throwing more spells out. Matt tried to join her, but felt his stump ache after forcing his hand so far, and his wand felt clumsy in his left hand; he had neglected that training.

It didn't matter much, though, for with the hurled water-tank from the side came more spells, and Matt could now see Albus, hunkered down behind cover on the next rooftop over, having moved to flank Thane's band and sending curse after curse at them. The chasers had ended up in a corner, and it seemed they knew it, all three starting to back off.

But it was Thane who turned tail first and lunged over the side of the building to the street below.

'We've got to -' But before Matt could finish there was a blur of movement from Albus' rooftop, a figure vaulting over their railing in pursuit, and he ducked back down again at a fresh wave of spells, gawping at Rose. 'Was that Eva?'

'Yep.'

'What the _hell is going on_?'

'Shoot first!' Rose snapped, ducking behind their tank. 'Explanations later!'

§

'You're lucky you own a medical centre,' said Lily as she walked around the body laid out on the slab. 'Or this would be some supremely creepy.'

'I think bringing a corpse to your own medical centre makes it seem like you're ready for this sort of exhumation procedure,' drawled Nejem, snapping on latex gloves. 'That's considerably more _creepy_. I hope you're considering my going rates, Mister Malfoy.'

'Yeah,' said Lily, 'I'm wondering why you woke up your most junior medic for this shit.'

Scorpius rolled his eyes. He and Selena had brought the body to the Foundation's London headquarters, specifically the very small wing for medical assessments and support that were usually for specialised cases before referrals to Saint Mungo's. In the early hours of the morning it had now been turned into an impromptu morgue for their findings in the north. 'I need people I can trust.'

'I'm very touched,' said Nejem, 'but you and I have hardly met -'

'My wife trusts you. Selena trusts you.'

'Selena trusts you to be an enormous pain in the arse,' Selena corrected, 'but you're also one of the foremost experts in poking dead bodies Gringotts' Curse Breakers _have_.'

'An astute and academic assessment as ever, though you know I prefer desk work to field work. So consider this double my independent rates considering a need for privacy, the fact that this is a rather less _dusty_ body than the ones I am used to, and that I've been woken up at four in the morning.'

'It's important,' said Scorpius.

Nejem swept his wand over the body inexpertly plucked from the ground. 'At an initial glance, this person has been dead for anything between three and ten years. Urgency seems unlikely.'

Selena raised an eyebrow. 'That wide a guess?'

'It really depends,' said Lily. 'Being more specific at this point is kind of premature. Decomposition can be affected by the kind of casket they were in, the kind of soil, humidity, heat, cold, the depth of the burial…'

'Okay, okay.' Scorpius lifted his hands. 'While this is kind of handy, we're really after identification.'

Lily and Nejem exchanged glances, and Nejem sighed. 'Does he always ask these sorts of scientifically improbable tasks of his staff?'

She snorted. 'Let's see if he wants it done in the next five minutes.'

'I'm right here, and paying you. _Less_ for sarcasm, in fact.'

'We don't need an _exact_ identification,' said Selena. 'I mean, we don't want you to poke the body and tell us for sure who it is. We really want to know if this is the body of Prometheus Thane.'

The two again exchanged looks. This time, Lily spoke first. 'Where did you get this body?'

Scorpius shifted his weight. 'Prometheus Thane's grave.'

'You go weird when Rose isn't in town, don't you.' She sighed. 'Do you have any tissue samples or - or _anything_ we can compare against?'

'Uh…'

Nejem tried to click his fingers and failed abysmally with the latex gloves. 'DMLE. He was held in their custody, they'll have taken several kinds of samples for their records.'

'I suppose,' added Lily, 'but unless they have anything physical, we'll still struggle.'

'Is there anything _magical_ you can do?' sighed Scorpius.

'Uh… ambient magical connection?' Nejem looked at Lily.

'That'd take something of some personal significance, and ideally something they'd been in physical contact with for some time…' She blinked, then glanced back to Scorpius and Selena. 'I bet Dad's still got his wand in storage.'

Selena brightened. 'If you get Thane's wand, you can see if this is his body?'

'Is there some reason you're worrying if Prometheus Thane was actually buried in Prometheus Thane's grave,' wondered Nejem, 'or is this what happens to heroes? Do you start making up problems when you've been out of the limelight long enough?'

'It's not his wand,' sighed Scorpius, and grimaced as all eyes fell on him. 'Risk of the profession. He'd had the wand he carried in Saint Annard for about three months; took it off a Thornweaver in San Francisco.'

'That sounds like a terrible song from the Sixties,' muttered Nejem as he continued to examine the corpse Scorpius would only describe as 'goopy.'

'Accidents, chaos, even incarceration; he went from wand to wand. He mentioned to me once his original wand, his Ollivander's wand, was taken off him the first time he was arrested. He wriggled out of that incarceration but never got his wand back. This was in Macedonia.'

'So is it still in _their_ law enforcement vaults?' Selena wondered.

'We can ask.' Scorpius' expression pinched as he considered alternatives. 'If it's not, I've got a pretty good idea who's going to have it, and where it's going to be.'

Lily raised an eyebrow at him. 'You could just skip to the end and explain that.'

'Chicago suburbs,' said Scorpius. 'In the hands of Jericho Thane. His father.'

§

She landed in the street harder than she meant to, feeling her ankle buckle, but pushed past it. No time to stop, no time to hesitate, and her target was disappearing into the crowd with a flash of blond hair. Eva gritted her teeth through the pain and ran.

Thane - the one who looked like Thane - was fast. Darted back and forth through crowds to slow her down, dashed into a side alleyway, and she could almost see him wrestle with the same concerns that had plagued Matt. Easier to lose someone in the main streets, but on the rooftops, magic was an option.

 _Thane would never hesitate to engage someone in a duel_ -

That doubt had no sooner crawled into her head than Thane had lunged atop packing crates to vault onto the next rooftop, and with a lurch of the stomach she pursued. She knew she wasn't followed, knew Al and Rose were still tied up with Matt and making sure Thane's lackeys were down, but she knew her old mentor, knew he'd have compartmentalised information. They'd be hirelings who knew nothing.

But he'd stumbled once atop the roof and now she was right behind him. Instinct didn't move faster than spells, so as she scrambled up it was her foot that lashed out, hitting him in the ankle and sending him sprawling. He rolled with the impact and then they were both crouched on the roof, wands levelled at each other.

She hadn't seen those peerless blue eyes in so long, but there they were, icy control and locked on her, and the voice that slid across the dead heat of Rio came as familiar as a cold wind sinking to her bones. 'It's been a while, my dear.'

Chest heaving, Eva didn't lower her wand. 'Prove it,' she hissed. 'What happened between us on that Niemandhorn mountainside?'

'What makes you think,' said Prometheus Thane, voice tight, 'that the person you killed up in the Alps four and a half years ago was the _real_ me? Polyjuiced decoys for just such an occasion -'

' _Prove it_ ,' she snapped again.

'For your betrayal, I owe you _nothing_.' She'd only heard him that cold towards her once, in the depths of Ager Sanguinis when he'd suspected her disloyalty. 'I found you in that wretched hive - shall we get specific? September 17th, 2014, the market district in Algiers, when you tried to pick my pocket even though I was wreathed in so many spells that no Muggle should have been able to see me.' His wand didn't waver. 'I plucked you from that life, with your absent father and your disengaged mother who _barely noticed_ you were gone - who was happy when I said I'd take you in, train you, some man she'd never met taking her daughter off her hands. And in your gratitude, you turned your back on me -'

'You're working,' snarled Eva, 'with the Red Manticores.'

'Leading them, as matter of fact.'

'Tackleton, Faust, Argyris; whoever you are, any one of them could have told you -'

'You know as well as I do that Argyris is a brute, Tackleton is a fop, and Faust always kept us at arm's length until the money flowed. You know I never sat over brandy and talked about _you_ with Tackleton. I respected you far too much. Besides, I always liked them a little scared of you. To reveal you as the broken girl -'

'You _can_ _'t be him_!' But she knew he was right; there had been so few Thane ever viewed as equals, or close to it, of worthy of his respect. The Red Manticores were in so many ways the dregs of his old operations, the best and brightest whittled down over the years, like Thane himself, like Loganach. Like her.

'Because it's inconvenient? I taught you that with your will, you can do anything.' His wand twitched, but demonstratively instead of with a coming spell. 'That scar. Montenegro, 2020, one of our more legitimate jobs taking _down_ the border smugglers who were so very incompetent, except they had Griogair cornered and you actually tried to save him. With a wooden hut exploding in your face you're lucky it only carved up your jaw. You surprised me that day, Eva. I thought you'd only risk your neck like that for yourself, or me.'

Her throat tightened. 'We needed Loganach.'

The waggle of Thane's wand was almost admonishing, like a schoolteacher catching her out on a cagey answer. 'You liked him.'

'He treated _me_ like an equal.'

'He's a terrible loss.' Thane shook his head. 'Are we finished? I have matters to attend.'

' _Tell_ me,' Eva snarled as he stood, but though her wand was on him she didn't cast. The last time they'd been here, he'd been disarmed; the last time they'd been here, she'd cast without thinking and he'd died. Or someone had. ' _How_ , how is this possible -'

'So you accept now it's possible, not that I'm just a trick.' Thane gave his smile of secrets, the one where his eyes did twinkle, but with more menace than humour. 'I don't need to tell you, my dear. Frankly, I don't care if you believe me or not. I would have, once. I'd have asked you to join me, to come with me. But I gave you chances, indulgences five years ago. But you and I are _done_.' His expression turned cold. 'You have made your choice. You aren't just my enemy; you're a traitor.'

'Idon't care if you think that,' Eva lied, hot and angry like an indignant teenager, and her scowl was for herself more than him for letting that loose. 'Whatever you are, whoever you are, I'm bringing you in -'

Which was when she saw the trio of wizards rise to the far edge of the rooftop, led by Niko Argyris, all with wands on her. And Prometheus Thane smiled again. 'No,' he said softly. 'You're not. But this time you get to run and tell. That's the one for old time's sake. The last.' Somehow the lowering of his wand was a new threat. 'You turned your back on me, betrayed me, _us_. You've been left alone these years; no more. I have work to do, work which pays, but now I have a hobby, my dear, and it's called ruining your life. Anyone you've cared about will suffer and then they will die; anyone who's sheltered you, anyone who's done you a kindness, anyone who's so much as made you _smile_.'

'That's not going to be as easy as you think.' But she took a step towards the edge and, at Thane's gesture, the other wizards watched but made no move to stop her. Her eyes landed on Argyris. 'You can't believe it's him.'

Niko Argyris arched an eyebrow at her. 'I respect the man too much to let someone run around wearing his face.' Worst of all, she believed him. It would be too much to say Argyris was a man of honour, but he was straightforward and he was respectful, in his way.

'Oh,' said Thane, as if thinking of something, 'and give my regards to Scorpius. Now, run along, my dear.'

She took another step and they still didn't stop her. Four wands, and Argyris she wasn't sure she could take alone, no matter how good Thane or his imposter was. So, blessings counted, Eva backed to the edge of the roof before she swung herself over the edge, though not without one last look back.

Thane's cold eyes followed her all the way down to the street, and she could feel them on her as she ran.

§

Once, Scorpius would have bought Portkey tickets from some private company and waved them at officials in the transportation hub of the Department of International Magical Cooperation. But since the Thorn Wars the restrictions on international travel had grown so taut, so choking that it was best to get passes from the Ministry, best to pay their exorbitant paperwork fees and endure their ridiculous wait times. This wasn't just the fault of a department that had seen massive de-funding since its role in its former head trying to establish global domination. It was the consequence of failed global domination.

So now he stood in a queue in a lobby in the transportation hub, and it took him twenty minutes to get to the front. 'I'd like to purchase two tickets to Chicago, please.'

The narrow-faced official sifted through paperwork without looking up. 'Business or leisure?'

'Leisure,' Scorpius lied. It wasn't strictly business, either, but the one thing his Foundation didn't need was him lumping his vendetta with its operations even more. If something went wrong for him, it would not go wrong for the only legacy he had worth a damn.

'There's a Portkey on Friday to New York, 9 AM. That'll get you in at approximately 4 AM local time, and then it's a two hour wait for a Chicago Portkey, first thing internal travel operating hours. You'll have to arrange your own return from Chicago to New York, but a return Portkey to London can be arranged Saturday afternoon, 4 PM local time.'

That was an advantage America enjoyed, he thought. Their country was so huge that one could travel to almost any climate one could want, and do so all on the relatively freedom of internal travel. In Europe, a trip of such distances would require crossing at least two international borders, which could mean waits of six hours each leg on a good day. 'Sounds splendid,' he said.

'That'll be one hundred galleons,' said the official, and he tried to not sputter. He could afford it; it was just worthy of indignation. 'Names?'

'Scorpius Malfoy and Selena Rourke,' he said without thinking. He hesitated once he did think, and froze when he saw the official scribble the names on a piece of enchanted paperwork. The ink turned red.

The official stared at it, then lifted his head. A moment paused before he smiled politely. 'This will take a little time to process, Mister Malfoy. Could you hold? Just over there, please, so I can service more customers.'

Scorpius' jaw tightened. 'Is there a problem?'

'No problem, sir, if you'll just wait.'

'I've never had to wait like this _before_.' He tossed his hands up, aware they were drawing more stares from the officials and travellers in the lobby. 'You know what - forget it -'

He turned away, heard the official's chair scrape back as he stood. 'If you could please _wait_ , Mister Malfoy -'

'I'll get a _row boat_ , it'll be quicker -'

'Security!'

The doors were a long way away, but Scorpius still spotted two burly staffers side-step to block them. The lobby was silent, people backing away from him as if he were a bomb about to go off, more security staff starting to approach. He turned with incredulity. 'I'm trying,' he said through gritted teeth, 'to buy a _bloody ticket._ '

'Sir.' To the official's credit, he looked nervous and embarrassed. 'I regret to inform you that you're under a no-travel order and any attempt to break it has been automatically reported to the Auror Office.'

'I am not _sneaking out_ of the country! I travel _all the time_! I run an international bloody charity! I was in New Mexico just last week at the request of MACUSA!' _That was before the Manticores. That was before Thane. That was before they remembered what your name is, who your father is, what you_ are.

'I am sure,' said the official, 'that this can be cleared up -'

'Mister Malfoy?' A figure slipped through the guarded doors in the emerald robes of an Auror, and Scorpius' heart sank as he recognised Finnbar Savage, easily the most dour and unimaginative of Harry Potter's staff. He had always been assigned as the man to monitor Scorpius if necessary, one of the most senior members of the division without personal ties, and could be relied upon to be equally unpleasant to everyone. 'I thought the DMLE made things clear to you.'

Scorpius rose to his full height and still found himself short of the approaching security and Auror. 'I was _requested_ to not leave the country; I didn't know you had the authority to _ground_ me as a citizen who's never been convicted of -'

'How about you don't play innocent when you and I both know why you're walking free,' said a bored-sounding Savage. 'And booking transport withSelena Rourke don't look much better, neither.'

'We're old friends,' said Scorpius in a tight voice. 'You might be familiar with our work together; curing Hogwarts of Phlegethon, thwarting the Council of Thorns' hunt for the Chalice of Emrys, _apprehending Lillian Rourke at Niemandhorn_?' Once, the press had called him a hero and he'd despised it. What a stupid, self-indulgent child he'd been to think undeserved adulation was worse than distrust and hate.

'I _am_ familiar with your work, Mister Malfoy,' said Savage, and gestured to the door. 'Let me invite you down to my office.'

'Yes,' Scorpius sneered. 'Let's _attempt_ some professionalism in not airing my personal business to the public.' The fact he'd argued was beside the point, but he still followed Savage, who quickly escorted him from the lobby. With swift Apparition they were soon enough in the Auror section of Canary Wharf, in one of the private rooms because Savage's desk was in the bull-pen and he was not important enough for his ownoffice.

'Willoughby, get us some coffee,' Savage shouted at the door before he sat down with Scorpius, whose only satisfaction was being waited on by a former classmate. 'Right, let's sort this out: why are you going to Chicago?'

'That's honestly none of your business,' said Scorpius hotly. 'Unless I'm under arrest? I'm pretty sure you need to tell me if I'm under arrest.'

Savage slumped in his chair with a scowl. 'Can we cut the shit, Malfoy? We both know how this works. You're out because your old man cut a deal, and that's been fine and dandy until your old friends showed their faces again. Now we've got to ground you. It's for your own good; if you're still in Britain, nobody can accuse you of shooting off to work with them.'

'It seems like I'm _already_ accused of shooting off to work with them. Is this even legal, for you to restrict -'

'Sure, just legal acrobatics, like you being _free_.' Savage leaned forward. 'I don't give a shit. I honestly don't. But these are the requirements from my boss. Director Slade, that is, _not_ the one whose family you married into. You're free on our indulgence, so our indulgence means you don't try to run to _Chicago_. Why?'

'I just loved the musical, Savage. It spoke to me on a deep and meaningful level. I wanted to see the town for myself,' Scorpius deadpanned.

'You playing all coy doesn't really help much.'

'It's _none of your business_.'

Savage slumped with another sigh. 'Look. You tell me the truth, maybe we can work something out. But I can't authorise a travel request with "he says it's none of our business" written on it. Not _also_ with Selena Rourke.' He paused and cocked his head. 'You're not fucking her, are you? Look, the paperwork don't have to say "Malfoy went to have an illicit affair in Chicago" -'

'How dare you!' Scorpius shoved himself to his feet, chair clattering back. The worst thing was that Savage sounded almost sympathetic, as if he'd stumbled onto the truth and wasn't judging. 'I'll stay in Britain. Happy now?'

'I'm not holding you. If you don't want to talk about it and you won't try it again, though, sure. Go home. But right now it might do you good, Malfoy, to remember we got a file on you inches thick, and we're not going to stop watching you. It's politics that's got you free, not innocence or trust. We won't push you, but you got to not push _us._ The things you did, you must have been kidding yourself if you thought it was going to go away. We can make arrangements, we can find a balance, but this is _never_ going to go away. Okay?'

Again he sounded almost sympathetic, like he was explaining the realities of the world instead of bringing down judgement. It was still, as Scorpius mumbled his agreement and left, forgetting any possible coffee brought by former classmates, _not_ actually okay.

* * *

 _A/N: Yikes, studies kick my ass but I'm okay with pushing forward with updates. You know how a project is really working because it finally starts to write itself; last Thursday I wrote a scene between two characters I always knew would happen, but the weight of it has prompted me to entirely re-frame the ending of this story. In a good way! In a 'I'm getting my groove and this is working' way. Though it wasn't intended to be a commentary explicitly on real world issues such as the references to the US and its border control; MACUSA in Regeneration was always going to have a role, and remember I started working on this in summer 2016. When we thought the world would be better. HA. I mean, I'm kind of lying, I will never shy away from making pointed political commentary if it also serves the story, but MACUSA and their role in Regeneration was not originally intended to be that commentary. Regeneration has some shit to say about globalisation I don't strictly agree with, which is weird but works in its own context._

 _Thank you for the kind words on my studies, they are advancing (1 out of 3 dissertation chapters finished today, woot?). And you're too kind, Stromsten, for saying I don't need to study (and as ever, 3 3 for you, one of if not the longest-lasting of my vocal readers), but writing good Potter fanfic does unfortunately not preclude my need for research to ace my criminology degree. I WISH. Though the degree has probably helped my writing? Still, the show goes on!_


	9. The Best Way Out

**Chapter 9: The Best Way Out**

'So what,' said Rose once they were safe in the apartment in the secure part of Rio de Janeiro, 'were you even _doing_ out here?' The place had been provided by her work, the White Wands owning multiple secure safe-houses in multiple locations worldwide; usually they were for emergencies and while she knew she'd have some explaining for Marius when she got back, it was a place she trusted to be clear.

She watched as Matt's gaze washed over her with dismissal to examine Eva before landing on Al. 'Business deals. There's a flourishing black market out here. I've done business here before, but it's never gone _this_ badly.'

'I should hope not,' said Al, arms folded across his chest. 'There's a lot of black market trade in the archaeology business?'

He shrugged. 'Of course. Objects of ancient magical importance are always of value. Sometimes they're powerful in their own right, but those are usually accounted for; nothing quite so exciting as the Chalice. Sometimes they're of interest to collectors who'll want to show them off in private rooms just to demonstrate how rich and intellectual they are. More often they're fascinating for research purposes, utterly harmless and of use only to academics, but they're held in countries and governments who don't _want_ to sell them on. So they're stolen and traded.'

'But this doesn't seem so harmless,' said Rose. 'Not if the Manticores and this fake Thane are after it.'

Matt leaned back on the sofa and opened his hands. 'I don't know what to say. I wanted to buy some diaries of the scholar Catalina, specifically on his finding and translatingthe lost fragment of the Emerald Tablet. The lost fragment is from ancient Greece, written by the wizard Euryleon; Euryleon's other works established fundamental principles of transmutation and alchemy. The belief is that the lost fragment might give further academic insights. But Catalina was buried with his translations and the knowledge of his burial site is lost.' He sighed. 'As you see, this is all _fascinating_ but none of it is the sort of life-and-death thing you're used to.'

'Could it really be just about money?' Al looked to Eva.

She stood against the tall windows, silhouetted against the shine of Rio in the early evening, and did not turn back to them. 'You met Thane when he worked for greater forces. But for ten years we worked for the money. Historical artifacts wasn't his usual business, but he's been flexible.'

'Historical artifacts have become a hotbed of smuggling with all of the modern restrictions on international travel,' said Matt. 'More countries tightening their borders, much less cooperation on research. There's big money in it. And Catalina's become the latest big thing, which is sort of my fault.'

Rose arched an eyebrow at him, and saw him not quite look at her. 'What did you do?'

She could tell he didn't appreciate the accusing tone she couldn't quite shake off. 'One of my academic contacts, Annabeth Delaney, died. I was one of those who went through her archives and it turns out she'd been sat on a goldmine of records she'd not had time to go through. Including the diaries of one of Catalina's apprentices, which I revealed at a conference last month. It's what's set me on this path. Obviously it's drawn some attention.'

Al raised his hands. 'History aside, I have one question: is anything in this _dangerous_ , or -'

'No, no. I'm sure of it. There are interesting implications for alchemy, but that's all.'

'This doesn't deviate much from what the Red Manticores have been up to,' Rose accepted. 'We shouldn't jump at shadows just because this is Thane.'

'Just because this _looks_ like Thane.' Al's gaze turned on Eva.

While her back was still to them, it was as if she sensed the attention. 'I don't know,' she said at length. 'There's nothing to make me think it's _not_ him. I tried to ask him things only he would know; he dodged my question about our confrontation on Niemandhorn. But if it _is_ him, either he came back from the dead or I killed someone else. The latter makes the most sense.'

'What about questions on _other_ things?' Rose asked.

'If it's a trick, it's a very good one.'

But Rose had never taken the time to get a good read on Eva, opaque at the best of times, and had no idea if this meant Eva believed Thane or not. 'Let's look at the good side of this. We know something the Manticores want. Either they'll keep pursuing Matt or go for his records, or they'll follow other sources.' She paused. 'And by _we_ , I mean we can pass this information on to Harry.'

'So it's my turn to be bait,' said Matt wryly, then shook his head. 'If Harry's heading up a task force for these Manticores, I'll happily give him all I have. Especially as Thane's hunt might put some of my colleagues at risk.' He hesitated. 'But thank you. All of you. I know this wasn't easy…'

Rose fumbled for words, grateful when Al scoffed and said, 'Isn't this what we _do_?'

'I don't know,' said Matt, smile small and lopsided. 'I thought we were retired.'

'Either way, I've managed to secure us a direct Portkey to London through work.' Rose spotted the look in Eva's eye. 'My work allows for some discreet transport. You'll be fine. The downside is it's not until morning.'

Eva nodded. 'Then if you'll excuse me, I'm going to shower.' She glanced at Matt as she headed for the door to the apartment's bedrooms. 'You need to work on your nose for danger, or I'm going to have to take that sword back.'

'I need it to get _out_ of danger.' But Matt's lips curled, and Rose was reminded she had yet again underestimated whatever bond between the two had formed on Brillig Island years ago.

Al glanced between them as Eva left, drumming his fingers on his knees. 'I'd hoped this was going to give us more answers, not more questions.'

'Technically, it's not _more_ questions,' Rose pointed out. 'It's just "is Thane really back?" written in even larger text.'

'I got close,' said Matt with a grimace. 'It seemed like him. But honestly, I dealt with him the least of maybe all of you. I had the chance to check him for illusions; it's not one, and he was way too active anyway. I'd expect a Polyjuice for that kind of sophistication, and it wouldn't show up on my spells.'

'That's highly unlikely; neither it nor the ingredients from Thane himself would have lasted five years.'

Albus pushed himself to his feet. 'I'm going to get some rest.'

Old habits died hard; Rose found herself giving Matt a wry glance as he disappeared through the same door as Eva, even if it led to a corridor with all the rooms beyond, and found Matt matching her expression. Then the door shut behind Al, and that seemed to knock sense into him. He, too, stood.

'You didn't have to be the one to come here -'

'Neither Scorpius nor Selena can travel easily or quickly right now,' Rose said. 'And it seemed most sensible for Al and Eva to have some backup considering we didn't know what we were going into, and - and of _course_ I did, Matt!' Frustration finally bubbled up over all the prim and proper appearances she'd felt she was supposed to keep up.

'I didn't mean to worry anyone,' said Matt, gesturing vaguely with his prosthetic right hand. 'I expected Scorpius to raise the alarm with local law enforcement when we set up the protocol; I didn't know he'd told you -'

'No, he told me when you didn't check in, and normally we _would_ try local law enforcement, but you happened to be in one of the most dangerous urban magical areas in the world,' she said flatly. 'I was unaware of this protocol. As was _Selena_.'

He flinched. 'She _certainly_ doesn't need more worrying.'

'What's going on with you two? She was coy and evasive, you're rushing off to potentially dangerous situations she doesn't know much about…'

'This wasn't meant to be dangerous. I always take security measures in case something like this happens, but it was _meant_ to just be an exchange. And do you honestly think you and I should be talking about this?'

Rose straightened as if struck. 'I thought you and I were…' She hesitated. 'Talking again? Is this really time for -'

'First, you're right now trying to poke into my private life,' Matt pointed out. 'Until my private life becomes relevant to whatever crisis is hitting the world again, I will _always_ have the right to guard it from whomever I want. Second, we had a _chat_ at a _party_ , I don't… you still…'

She stood abruptly. 'I still killed de Sablé, you mean. Matt, I am never going to pretend you should be okay with that; _I_ am never going to be okaywith it, but you have to accept that I am always going to care about you. Whether that means trying to help because you and Selena have been terrible at disguising there's some sort of problem, or _saving your life_. I didn't come to Rio out of _tactical necessity_ , I came because I refuse to stand by and let something happen to you!'

He clicked his tongue. 'And I'm grateful. I am, Rose. But this doesn't mean I'm about to confide in you.'

'Then who _are_ you going to confide in? Because travelling the world with Selena's probably not done wonders for your closeness to anyone else.'

She hadn't intended an attack, but knew she'd misjudged the moment the words left her lips, and Matt's expression pinched. 'So how's _Scorpius_ if Thane's back? Is he talking to you about it? What it means for him, his future, his feelings? His sense of betrayal? The things he did when they worked together?'

She'd known Matt a long time. Loved him when she was young, then maybe loved him again for a time after, and he maintained he'd loved her all along. Even after all these years they knew each other so well, well enough to get under one another's skin, well enough to make the most painful and pointed declarations of war. For some reason they'd never known how to make peace. And even if Scorpius was talking to her about Thane, his return only soured her fears for her pregnancy, and its implications in her marriage. Matt couldn't know _that_ , but he always knew where she was weak, somehow.

'We talked at a party,' he carried on when she hadn't summoned an answer. 'I still didn't want to be at your wedding, I still didn't come running when Scorpius was hurt, I still don't want to open up about my private life. I am _grateful_ , Rose. I'm even grateful that you care about me.' He sounded like he was going to make another bitter statement, but held his tongue. 'But I still don't owe you anything.'

He left, because she supposed he _had_ to leave after that, and Rose stood in the gleaming light of the setting sun and reflected that she really needed to stop chasing endangered and injured men on the other side of the globe if they were only going to clam up on her after.

§

When she entered the corridor she was surprised to hear the sounds of Albus moving about in his room; he had not, it seemed, gone after Eva. So Rose did before she knew what she was thinking, her knock answered by a damp-haired Eva in fresh clothes. Her failure to read the other woman did not improve with the blank expression she received, but then Eva stepped back and let her in.

'Thank you,' said Rose, wringing her hands together. 'I hope the room's alright for you.'

'I've stayed in far worse,' said Eva in that usual bland voice of hers, then, 'Sorry. It's very nice. Thanks.'

Rose turned her gaze skyward as Eva turned away. She looked like she'd been packing after the shower. 'I wasn't fishing for compliments. The company funds all this. I was just checking you don't need anything.'

'I know.' Eva paused, stood by the small desk on which sat the shoulder-bag that seemed to contain all her worldly possessions. It was small and Rose suspected it did _not_ magically extend. 'I was trying to be polite. Dismissive habits die hard. Though I suspect that's _not_ the only reason you're here.'

Rose supposed she shouldn't be surprised when Eva proved good at reading people. She _had_ been assigned as a spy and infiltrator after all. 'How sure are you?'

'About -'

'You were cagey on your answers back there. We're not asking - _I_ _'m_ not asking - you to give a legal statement on this. But I trust your instincts. How sure are you?'

Eva took her time zipping her bag shut. 'Remember we're talking about the one man who can turn my instincts upside-down.'

'One of two men,' Rose said wryly.

'Yes.' Eva did not turn around. 'I meant what I said back there. He knew a lot, but an impersonator would do his homework. He was evasive, but if it were really him, he'd want to keep us guessing. But I was very sure in the DMC. Now I'm _absolutely_ sure.'

Rose had so many tensions running through her she struggled to keep track of them, but at that the string that was the influence of Prometheus Thane grew more taut. 'How is this possible?'

'For you, more than anyone, the impossible is your stock in trade.' Eva glanced over her shoulder in time to catch Rose's confused flinch. 'How many impossible feats have you achieved, Mrs Malfoy?'

' _Actually_ , I kept my name. But I suppose if Thane spent eighteen months trying to resurrect Scorpius, even if the circumstances of Scorpius' resurrection were unique to his bond to the Chalice, we shouldn't be shocked to discover he might have learnt some secrets along the way.'

'Exactly. Perhaps something he could have prepared in advance. Perhaps secrets which his allies took and acted on.' Eva frowned. 'The problem _there_ is that the only one of the team who could have reasonably achieved something that complicated was killed by law enforcement a couple of years ago. Tackleton, Faust, and Argyris aren't - it's wrong to say they're not bright enough, at least for Faust and Argyris, but neither of them were good at _this_ sort of magic. Griogair Loganach was the only one anywhere near as brilliant as Thane.'

'The Australians got Loganach, didn't they?'

That small smile of Eva's tugged at her lips. 'You did your homework.'

'I work for one of the world's leading security firms. Of course I did.' Rose hesitated. 'Not to mention Thane's importance to my husband.' She tried to ignore the look in Eva's eyes, a sardonic glint as if they'd finally got to the meat of the matter. 'Thane -'

'Again, you understand better than the rest how the world works. That it's too simple to call Prometheus Thane pure evil. It would be convenient, but it would blind you to the truth of the matter.'

'Just because Thane could care about people doesn't mean that he didn't unleash a plague on _children_ and cause the deaths of two, not to mention the further physical and psychological impact upon a _generation_ ,' Rose snapped. 'He might have been _sympathetic_ to you but he still turned you into a child soldier. He might have had some strange over-relating issues with Scorpius, but he kept him hostage for eight months for Lillian Rourke to control his father. And will you _stop_ inferring I'm…'

Eva raised an eyebrow. 'Inferring you're what?'

' _Different_.'

She sighed. 'All of you live on different points on the scale of cynicism. It would be easy to say Scorpius has been most touched by the darkness. Or that Selena is the most pragmatic. And Matt has shown he's made of sterner stuff than he seems. I'm not in the business of judging you, Rose. But I'm not convinced any of them would have made the cold, calculated choice to kill Reynald de Sablé.'

 _Why does it always come back to this._ Rose's gaze landed on the bag, the bag neatly packed a day early. 'I came in here because I am never going to fully understand the hold Prometheus Thane has over my husband, and I thought you might stand the best chance of explaining it to me. That's not really grounds for you to be provocative and hostile.'

'I'm not -'

'Were you planning on sneaking out afterI'd gone to bed, or would it have sufficed for me to go to my room?' Rose's eyes snapped back on Eva. 'Remember, I'm married to Scorpius Malfoy. I am more than familiar with emotional attacks to keep people at bay.'

Eva froze, and only after a few long seconds said, 'This was not my intention. After all, I have all night to run away.'

'I'm sure abandoning him without saying goodbye for the _third_ time would do you both good. I don't enormously care if you choose to do that to yourself again, but speaking as someone who had to deal with the fallout both times before, I care about _him_.'

Eva looked away. 'He's better off -'

'That might have been true the first, or even the second time. But I'm not convinced it's true this time, and it's certainly not true since _you_ came back to _him_. You might have not expected Thane's return, but there's always going to be something. And if you want to give up again, if you want to go, you have to do three things: You have to say goodbye, you have to never come back, and you have to _tell_ him that.'

'I do intend to stay gone forever. But telling him -'

'Is too painful? For you, or for him?' Rose took a step forward. 'Look, I wish I could do this emotionally distant trick too, but believe it or not, I respect you, Eva. I respect that you risked a lot to do what's right, and to change. My priority may be Albus' happiness, and I also happen to think we'll resolve this Manticores crisis more easily with your help, but I have no desire to see you isolated and miserable.'

'All I can offer him right now is the hope of what we had, for it to be snatched away. I can spare him that.'

'No, you can't, because you've _already_ dangled that hope. You want to tell me I'm cold? Fine. Here's the cold advice: fight for what you want and what you need, because the world _sure as hell_ won't give it to you.'

Eva's gaze stayed locked on the wall, and she drew a slow breath. 'I don't think you're cold because you fight for what you want. You do what _needs_ to be done. Too many people _say_ they do that, and it's not true. _They_ wouldn't have been prepared to die to stop Raskoph.'

Rose gave a short, bitter laugh. 'If you think that was about heroism or necessity, you're wrong. Believe it or not, I understand a little something about sacrificing yourself when you don't know what you deserve.' She sought the other woman's gaze and finally caught it. 'I don't know if you can have a normal life. I don't know what Albus is thinking. I don't know what you _deserve_. I know _Al_ deserves you not running out on him again. And I think if ever you had a duty, it was in putting the Red Manticores, your _former comrades_ , down. Especially if they're led by Prometheus Thane.' She stepped aside and pointed at the door. 'And if you disagree, then fine. Walk out that door. Get one of your Portkeys, and I won't stop you. But then you _sure as hell_ will stay gone, stay out of his life, and find some corner of the world to die in.'

Eva's hand had curled on the strap of her bag, and Rose's heart lunged into her throat. Surely she hadn't misread this so badly, but it had been a long five years for everyone. Then, slowly, Eva let go. 'I don't know how this ends.'

'Yes,' said Rose. 'I imagine that's the problem.'

She left, then, and went to bed wondering why she'd come to the far side of the world to deal with the problems of people who didn't want her to help.

This did not improve the next morning, when she woke early to ensure the Portkey would be ready for them and because the time difference was playing havoc with her body clock. It seemed Al was suffering much the same, for she found him at the breakfast bar with a coffee.

'So I talked to your girlfriend last night,' Rose said by way of greeting.

Al winced. 'What did I do to piss you off?'

She looked at his mug. 'I never can figure out how to make these coffee machines work.' For a moment she considered warning him that Eva had almost bolted. 'She's squirrelly right now. She's _confident_ it's Thane.'

'I don't know how clear her thinking is.' He glanced up. 'How's Scorpius been about it?'

'Too much of Scorpius feels grateful towards Thane, and then guilty for feeling grateful. He's never had his head screwed on right about that man. Something we have in common in our love lives.' She slid onto the stool opposite him.

'I'm really not thinking about my love life right now.'

'Well, that's a lie, because you've never _stopped_ thinking about Eva, and I'm sure her presence in a crisis hasn't calmed that down.' Rose cupped her chin in her hand. 'You know you can talk to us. To _me_. Scorpius projects everywhere.'

Al looked back down at his mug. 'She gave me a file the other day. _Her_ file, from MACUSA. It's dated a few months before Phlegethon; I think it covers more or less everything from before she and Thane got involved in the Council of Thorns. Every offence she's wanted for, not just in the US. Everything she's done.'

'Everything she's done that they know about.' Rose reached for his hand, and mused that maybe Eva had had better reasons to run away after all. 'That can't have been easy.'

'There was nothing surprising in there,' Al said instead. 'And I'm sick of this.'

She frowned at the unexpected vehemence. 'Which "this"?'

'This - feeling like this. Wanting things, and then feeling guilty for wanting them, and - it's been five years, Rose. _Five years_. You know how tempted I was, when I got her letter after Niemandhorn, to say "screw it" and leave and look for her?'

'Yes,' said Rose quietly. 'Look, Al, I get there are no easy answers. And certainly no right answers. I think all we can do is make the choices that won't break us inside and _then_ figure out how to live with ourselves. And, honestly, screw what everyone else thinks.'

Something in his eyes darkened. 'Is that why you still have nightmares of falling?' Her breath caught, and she silently cursed her husband for daring to seek counsel in his worry for her. 'Is that why you're completely alright with Matt still struggling to _look_ at you?'

Rose inhaled slowly. 'I didn't come here to fight, Al. All of that's exactly part of figuring out how to live with ourselves. I didn't say it would be easy. But yes. Those were the choices that _wouldn_ _'t_ break me inside. Even if someone died both times, and one of them was almost me.'

Al pushed himself to his feet, shaking his head, but he looked tired rather than angry. 'You ever want to beat Hugo for having a _normal_ life?'

'Often.'

His lips curled. 'I would talk, Rosie. Honestly. But I have nothing new to say - how do I forgive her, how do I live with what she did, how do I take the risk that even if I can make peace with myself that she won't be locked up or executed or Kissed? You can't answer those questions. All I can do is talk about them over and over, because talking about it feels like progress, if I want to lie to myself.'

She returned the smile with wry sympathy. 'I know. I can't tell you anything you don't _know_ , either. But you know, I'm not here because I give a shit about the _truth_ of Prometheus Thane or not. I care how it affects Scorpius, but that's _it_. He's no different to any monster out there. I'm here because all of this is getting in the way of my future, and I _fought_ for this future. It's mine. I want it. I'm going to damn well have it. And nobody's going to _give_ us these futures, Al. Nobody's going to give us anything.'

He was quiet for a moment, staring at the floor, then gave a short bob of a nod. 'That's not quite true,' said Al. 'Because I know how to make that coffee machine work, so I can give you a cuppa at least.'

§

Selena was on her feet the moment the door to the flat opened to let in Rose, Al and Matt, the cup of tea Scorpius had provided long forgotten in their tense waiting. 'Are you alright?' she demanded, stalking across the open-plan room towards them.

Rose and Al were wise enough to exchange glances and get out from between her and Matt, who lifted his hands in a placating manner. 'Nothing worse than -'

'Good,' she said, then punched him on the arm again and again. 'What - were - you - _thinking_!'

'Hey, I'm - ow!' He brought up his hands protectively, then one blow hit his prosthetic and she reeled back with a hiss of stinging knuckles. 'What the hell?'

'Getting yourself in danger without _warning_ me? I have to find out through bloody _Scorpius_ that you've been abducted in the middle of Brazil?' The fact that 'bloody Scorpius', that all of them, lurked near the sofas pretending they were anywhere else was irrelevant right now. 'Were you going to _tell_ me -'

'There was nothing more dangerous about this job than any other!' Matt protested. 'I met a black market contact to purchase some old _diaries_ , I didn't think this was going to lead to me getting abducted by Prometheus Thane back from the fucking dead!'

'You cared enough to set up safety protocols -'

'Because that's what my job _requires_! I've been doing this for years, Selena, and you _know_ this! This isn't on me!' His gaze softened, though his hands remained raised protectively. 'I'm sorry I scared you, I really am. I know it must have been bloody awful being here, waiting for news, not able to do anything useful -'

'We perfectly usefully dug up Prometheus Thane's grave,' she sneered without thinking.

Scorpius sighed as Rose and Albus stared at him. 'Oh good. That came out in a way which makes me sound sane.'

Rose goggled. 'You exhumed -'

'Yes, Weasley, we dug him up, he's in one of Malfoy's little private rooms while we find out if the corpse is actually him, it's the best way we can establish if this impostor is real or not,' Selena said, as if the identity of a man wearing the face of their most notorious enemy was small fry. She turned back to Matt. 'I hope this _diary_ was worth it.'

His jaw tightened. 'I am getting pretty sick of being yelled at for something I couldn't possibly anticipate even though I took all appropriate safety precautions.' His voice had gone low in that way she knew meant he was really angry, and he looked over her shoulder at the others. 'I'm going home. Al and Rose can fill you in on the details if you want to play world vigilantes again. Thank you, Scorpius, for the security procedures.'

He didn't look at her again as he stalked out the door, and Selena stared after him long enough that her expression was studied when she turned to the others, who were all looking like they'd rather be elsewhere. 'So,' she said airily, 'what happened?'

Between them, Al and Rose went over everything; the hunt, the fight, the reports from Matt and Eva's confirmations of Thane. Then Rose added, 'and… the corpse?'

Scorpius winced. 'Look, this is the easiest way to see if Eva's right. If it's Thane, we've got an impostor. If it's not… we need to find out how he did this.'

'I thought,' said Rose, 'we were cooperating with the authorities.'

'I'm not sure how legal it is to grave-rob. Probably not very,' said Scorpius apologetically. 'I'm not waiting for the paperwork to -'

'Oh, here we bloody go again,' Selena sighed, rubbing her temples. 'Back to the old days: do we trust authorities or do we go insane and do everything ourselves?'

' _Maybe_ ,' said Rose carefully, 'we tell Harry what happened in Rio and then wait. And _maybe_ we go have conversations instead of acting like we don't have time because we're about to lunge into the next crisis.'

'That's some discreet work, Rose,' Selena drawled. 'I couldn't possibly tell who you were talking about -'

Rose's gaze flattened. 'Talk to Matt or don't talk to Matt; talk to us or don't talk to us. That's all on you, honestly. We just need less sardonic commentary and more action, or choices to _not_ take action.'

 _There it is. Yet again the point where your problems become inconveniences._ Selena didn't let her expression shift one iota. 'That's fine,' she said. 'This isn't my fight; really, it'd be a terrible idea for me to be involved. Look, you all know how to get in touch…'

She turned for the door and it was Scorpius who took a few steps forward, whose voice went placating. ' _Selena_ , come on, don't go all like this again -'

'It's been five years, Scorpius,' she said, opening the door. 'You have no idea what my _like this_ even is any more.' If they were going after her, they didn't catch up before she was in the lift and trundling down. She couldn't be far behind Matt, but she had no desire to catch up. Even if he was long gone, she knew where he'd be.

 _Home_ , he'd said. It doubtless meant his family home, his parents' house, where he hadn't lived for over five years but had been as good a base as anywhere on the rare occasions they'd returned to the UK. But nowhere else could better claim the title; not the apartments they'd rented for no more than six months at a time, the hotel rooms paid for by his studies or her company, only to move on, and move on, and move on. She'd been in Britain no more than a week and already it felt like hounds nipped at her heels, and every time before he'd noticed her feeling like this and packed his bags without saying a word.

He still wasn't saying words, because that would break his promises, but he wasn't packing his bags, either. Which meant only one thing.

Selena Rourke was going to have to make an actual choice.


	10. Swinger of Birches

**Chapter 10: Swinger of Birches**

The knock on Eva's door came much sooner than she expected. It should have taken Albus a while to update Scorpius and Selena, and then likely more to brood, and she certainly wasn't going to go to him first. So she was cautious when she opened up, not because she was suspicious of him, but because his early arrival likely meant bad news.

She was both right and wrong. Wrong, because it wasn't Albus at all. Right, because Harry Potter standing at the door to her supposedly off-the-grid room meant things had gone worse than she'd ever imagined.

The head of the Auror Office gave a polite smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. 'Ms Saida. May I?'

She let him in without a word, resisting the urge to make sure her wand, slipped up her sleeve, was secure for a swift draw. But then, if Harry had come to arrest her, shouldn't she come quietly? If Harry had come to arrest her, _why was he alone_?

He shut the door behind him and stood with his back to it. For a moment neither of them spoke, her watching him with mute confusion, his gaze sweeping across the room with a practised air of assessment. She knew that look; she _had_ that look when evaluating her surroundings for danger. Now she locked it on him, the only possible threat, but his smile remained. 'Welcome back. I admit I tried to see you yesterday. You weren't here.'

'I was…'

'Brazil. I've heard.'

'You've spoken to Albus?' She folded her arms across her chest, pretending it was to keep a more secure grip on her wand, and not just to make herself feel more shielded.

'Heard from. Not seen. I wanted to speak with you first.'

Eva took a slow breath. 'I can confirm, sir, that Prometheus Thane is -'

'I have no doubt. But I'm not here to talk about Prometheus Thane. I'm here to talk about you.'

Again she studied his expression, and again she found nothing. He was more stern than his son, and while she could see where in those green eyes they shared there would be a twinkle of warmth in Al, in Harry there was nothing. 'I imagine you've had conversations with MACUSA.'

'Several, though none about you. I imagine that will change. Again, I'd rather we spoke first.'

He was making plain statements to see how she reacted, and stubbornness dug in to override nerves. 'What would you like to discuss, sir?'

'I'm a fan of history,' said Harry. 'So let's start there. Why did you rescue my son and the others in Ager Sanguinis seven years ago?'

She frowned. 'I don't see what-'

'You had handed them over to Prometheus Thane, you were rejoined with the Council, a hero for delivering the Chalice to Raskoph. So why?'

Eva could do nothing but stare at him for long moments. It was a simple question, yet the response did not come. In the end, she had to stammer, 'He - Thane and Raskoph would have killed them all -'

'Which was the plan you undertook when you infiltrated the Hogwarts Five. Whom you protected on Cat Island so they could retrieve the Chalice, when you could have let them die there and called in support from the Council. Whom you protected when you killed Elijah Downing, your ally.' Harry's gaze didn't change. 'Why?'

Her jaw tightened. 'Why do you want to know?'

'That's an evasion, Ms Saida.'

'If you're questioning if my loyalties remain with Thane -'

'You've demonstrated your loyalties several times; I am asking _why_.'

'I don't _know_.' The words tumbled out before she could stop herself, and Eva took a step back, heart thudding in her chest.

Harry's gaze did soften, his eyes turning more like his son's. 'I think you do,' he said, voice gentler. 'And this isn't a trick question. Take your time.'

She turned away, wrapping her arms around herself. 'Thane found me when I was - I grew up with nothing. Where the strong preyed on the weak. He helped me be strong. And I stayed strong by - by hurting people. For ten years I thought that was the way of the world.' When she tried to look back at Harry, she could only stare at his shoes. 'Your son - all of them - showed me it wasn't. They did the impossible, and they did it with laughter. With kindness. With love. Over and over I'd seen those treated as weaknesses to be exploited, but they… they drew strength from how much they cared. About each other, about everyone, about their cause.' She rolled a shoulder. 'Everything I'd done, I'd done because I thought it was necessary. Necessary to be strong, necessary to stay alive. It wasn't.'

His voice was even quieter when he asked, 'And Albus?'

She definitely didn't raise her eyes. 'Made me believe _I_ could be strong without being cruel. In Ager Sanguinis I realised I couldn't go back, I couldn't be what I once was.'

'And then you went on the run, but you didn't hide. You joined Balthazar Vadimas, you fought the Council in the criminal underworld.'

'Where else was I supposed to -'

'There were corners of the world the war didn't touch. And then again, after Niemandhorn, you went to Roux and you worked with him and you kept on hunting the last of the Thornweavers. You could have gone anywhere, done anything, but instead you kept risking your life. Why?'

Now she looked up to meet his gaze, and knew hers was more haunted than she wanted, emptier and more vulnerable. 'I don't know,' she said again, then rushed to carry on before he could challenge her, 'I mean, I _had_ to. I didn't know how to do anything else. It wouldn't have been right for me to try to live quietly. I _could_ do something, so - so I did, I don't expect that to make sense -'

'It doesn't,' said Harry, then the corner of his lip curled. 'But it keeps me going into work every day, too, even if my wife tells me I've earned a rest a thousand times over.'

Eva let out a slow, shaky breath. 'What's going on?'

'I thought it high time you and I had a proper conversation, considering how important Albus is to us both. And I wanted to get the measure of you before I offered you this.' He reached into his jacket and she illogically flinched as if there was going to be an attack, as if he'd quiz her before locking her up. But instead he drew out a folder and gave it to her.

She flipped it open. 'You want to _hire_ me?'

'The Auror Office has extensive powers when it comes to specialist consultants, even ones with criminal records. It's much the same as your work for SADOM; I've spoken to Roux, he's happy to keep you on the same sort of long leash as before. There would be no conflict.' He shifted his weight. 'It would give you more freedom of movement in this country as you work.'

Her eyes narrowed. 'What sort of work for you?'

'You are an international specialist in multiple problems, from organised crime to freelance mercenaries to global operations. There are any number of subjects on which your advice and input would be invaluable. And perhaps your wand, yes, but I'm more interested in your mind; I have a lot of people who are good with a wand.'

'I didn't live in South Africa.' Eva watched him, expression flat. 'I kept rooms there, but I travelled. Off the books or via my own contacts. Roux gave me the resources I needed when I needed them, and kept me on a retainer, and briefed me on problems. Or loaned me out to other governments or interest groups, sometimes. I was barely in Cape Town.'

'You might barely be in the UK.'

This admission was comforting, in a way. She was never comfortable being challenged on her motivations; it meant she had to assess them herself if she wanted to give a truthful answer, and her life was often too complex for words. But if this was all he offered her, it made it clear all he wanted was to check if she was a liability; it made it clear he wanted her as a resource. Eva knew where she stood when she was a resource. 'The more governments I answer to, the more I risk exposure to one _less_ friendly. If I'm under contract to you, I'm at risk of your Ministry of Magic trading me to MACUSA for political perks.'

'That's not going to happen -'

'Then what is?' She tossed the folder to one side and crossed her arms. 'What do I get out of this, Mister Potter? Other than being on someone else's string, or am I supposed to think you're a _benign_ string?'

His shoulders sagged. 'I hoped you might,' he admitted. 'So long as I can trust you, I can offer you protection -'

'I note the conditions. I have been doing perfectly fine for the last five years, however. What this deal _doesn_ _'t_ offer is the chance for you to… I don't know; gift-wrap me for your son? I will still be a criminal, I will still be at risk if I show my face too openly. Only now I can return to Britain sometimes, which will honestly be more painful for us both, so you can feel better about yourself?'

'I'm not offering this to feel better about myself,' said Harry, meeting her gaze without rising to the bait.

'Then why are you doing this?'

'I'll answer that with my own question: why did _you_ get in touch with him? If proximity is cruel to you both and this deal doesn't change enough?'

She hesitated. 'I was naive. I thought with the founding of the GWA and my work for SADOM, I stood a chance at immunity. But I'd let myself forget how much governments like MACUSA hate me, and with good reason. And the rise of the Manticores, the return of Thane, means _nobody_ is going to indulge a pardon or immunity for a former associate of theirs.'

'Maybe not right away,' Harry agreed, and she relaxed a little at his realism. 'But you're not wrong that work for SADOM helps you, that the GWA might help you. It might take years for the GWA to settle into its power, it might take years for tensions to not be so high about Thane and the Manticores, but when the time comes, you're going to want as solid a record as possible and as many allies as possible. And I can't be your ally if you've spent that time far away from Britain; I can't professionally vouch for you. But if you want your life to be anything but _this_ , then you have to play the long game, Ms Saida. And it will be risky, yes; it will expose you to your enemies, but it will make you _friends_.'

Her jaw tightened. 'The long game.'

'I'm not a betting man,' said Harry Potter, hands in his pocket, small smile too easy, too comforting, too much like his son's with decades more confidence to shore it up. 'But give me four years. Roux has kept you safe; I want to make you free.'

 _Nobody gives something for nothing_. Then the smile wasn't comforting; it was the gleam of manipulation from every man who'd tried to use her. 'And why would you want that? Let me disappear forever, say goodbye to your son forever, and he has a shot at a normal life -'

'It was my second most fervent wish that Albus have a normal life,' Harry agreed amiably. 'My most fervent wish is that he has a _happy_ life. But while my son is dearly important to me, I don't ignore sense and justice and safety for him. You had a shot, a good shot, at a pardon at the end of the Thorn Wars, and lost it because of politics. That's unacceptable.'

'A lot of things in life are unacceptable.'

He sighed. 'If someone had come to _me_ when I was nine years old, told me I was special, and told me that magic could make me strong and stop anyone from hurting me ever again, you and I might not have ended up all that different. A lot of things _are_ unacceptable. I reject them where I can. I think you do, too, if your compulsion to keep fighting means anything.'

She didn't answer, not wishing to be scathing that he'd compared them, but found herself picking up the folder again, gingerly flicking through pages.

Harry watched her for a heartbeat before he continued. 'Let's start here, with the Manticores; it might remind MACUSA why they hate you, but there isn't a soulin the world better qualified than you to advise global law enforcement agencies on how to stop them. With Thane's return, Britain has the lead; he's one of ours, after all. So let's shape this narrative. Let's make this the start of your freedom, not the end. Let's have all these organisations remembering, in four years' time, that you were the reason we stopped them.'

 _Four years. A lot changes in four years. Why should I assume it_ _'s for the better?_ She looked up to meet his gaze, and found those green eyes colder and more hardened than his son's. She didn't know if that was reassuring, that a pragmatist offered hope, or if she was reaching out to yet another web in which she'd be entangled. But she signed the paperwork anyway, and he smiled.

'Welcome, Ms Saida, to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.'

§

Marius had looked at her like she was mad when she'd told him to take the contract with the DMLE for the Manticores case, and that she'd handle it herself. They'd argued for an hour about her duties for the final wardings for the new GWA chambers, until she'd pointed out her team could handle the fine-tuning.

'Don't think I've not noticed you having your Healers appointments _and_ taking time off _and_ requisitioning company resources,' he grumbled, stabbing a finger at her across his desk. 'I don't need you going off the reservation.'

'I'm doing this, Marius, because the reservation is my _life_. Which is why you can charge the fees you're going to charge with my name on this contract.'

'Sure,' he said, 'so long as this isn't some personal vendetta you're going to screw up.'

'Believe it or not, I'm involved explicitly so it _doesn_ _'t_ get screwed up.' She scribbled something on her notes, tried to not think about the Healers' appointments she still had because her pregnancy was an inconvenience she could ill-afford right then, and looked up at her boss. 'Oh, and get Matthias Doyle in as a consultant for this. The Manticores are interested in goods on which he's a world-class expert.' Matt might not want to do this, he might not want to work with her, but he could make that decision for himself.

Marius turned his gaze skyward. 'I make a lot of money because we're private contractors who can work across borders because governments would rather have us on contract than let foreign officials meddle in their territory. But you've _never_ been one of my field agents -'

'I've passed all the qualifications -'

'You said you didn't _want_ to be one! _You_ said, when I headhunted you for this job, that you'd take it so long as you stayed behind a desk. And this job? This isn't going to be one for a desk.'

'I'm not going to screw anything up for the company.'

His palms landed heavily on the desk. 'This is about you. Not the company. I might fly a desk myself these days, but don't pretend I don't know what it's like on the streets, Rose.'

 _Not my streets_ , she thought, but took a deep breath. 'Yes, this is close to home, Marius. I, and people I care about, are going to be involved no matter what. This way, I'm involved properly.'

Marius' jaw tightened, then he nodded. 'One condition: you keep that PR and legal disaster of a husband of yours a million miles away from this.'

She thought about her disaster of a husband who'd already dug up a corpse, and smiled her lying smile. 'We're of one mind in this, Marius.'

§

'There's honestly only so much we can _do_ here,' said Nejem, sliding shut the metal drawer that held the corpse Scorpius had dug up from Thane's grave. 'You're right, a sample from his father would be worth trying -'

'I'm working on it,' sighed Scorpius. 'Shockingly, the British government doesn't much want me travelling, even if it's only to Chicago. Can't you figure anything out?'

'The corpse _could_ be five years dead, the cause of death _could_ have been a spell matching the one identified in the original examinations, the corpse hasn't _obviously_ been disturbed before _you_ disturbed it, the age _could_ match Thane's at his death. All I can do so far is not _disprove_ it's him.'

Scorpius scrubbed his face with his hands. 'Then I'll get to Chicago one way or another; there are people I can pay who'll slide my paperwork through…' When he lowered his hands, Nejem was looking past him, at the stairway back up to the main medical centre, and the way his expression was frozen meant he knew what he'd see when he turned.

Indeed, there was Rose at the entrance to the lab, having stunningly arrived just as he considered bribing a government official. He gave a weak smile. 'In my defence, you used an illegal Portkey to get to Brazil and I don't think your rampage through Rio was legal -'

Nejem slid along the wall. 'I think I'd like to be absent,' he declared, 'just so there's less for them to write on my subpoena.'

Rose was hard to read, though her smile to Nejem as he slipped past her for the stairs was polite. 'Always a pleasure, Salih,' she said, the only one to bother to call him by his given name. Then he was gone and it was both of them, and she sighed at her husband. 'I assumed you were keeping him down here.'

'I pay him very well -'

'I meant the body. Look, Scorpius, I'm not going to get righteous about any of this. I don't care that what you've done is illegal, I care that it might get you in _trouble_. Has it occurred to you that the DMLE might want to conduct their own examination of Thane's corpse?'

He grimaced. 'In my defence, at the time the world governments weren't taking Eva's claim enormously seriously. But a second sighting and Matt's testimony changes the game plan. I'll cross that bridge when we come to it.'

'And now you want to go see his father?'

'Really, I just want to steal some of his father's hair. But also if anyone knows anything about Thane being back, it'll be Jericho -'

' _Again_ ,' said Rose, 'don't you think MACUSA will be on that?'

Irritation flared in his gut. 'Since when did we trust world governments to have things in hand? Last time I checked, you went to Brazil because they couldn't.'

'Okay. That's fair. But this is sort of why I came looking for you.' She crossed to the metal table on which the exhumed corpse had once sat and drummed her fingers in a thudding beat. 'Harry's taking the lead on the Manticore investigation, and the White Wands have been hired because it's easier for governments to agree to send us than sorting the paperwork for foreign law enforcers to cross multiple borders. I got Marius to put me on the contract.'

He froze. 'So, what, when they want to dispatch people to chase the Manticores from Macedonia to Greece, they'll send _you_?'

'It's honestly early days -'

'I was okay with you going to Brazil because that was for _Matt_ ,' snapped Scorpius, going around the slab to face her, and ignoring that he wasn't okay with it at all, really. 'Not to mention a one-off. Now you're part of the multi-agency _anti-Thane task force_? When were we going to talk about this?'

Rose frowned. 'We're talking about this now. And I don't really expect them to send us to the fights; if the Manticores are located there are going to be government Hit Wizards and Aurors crawling all over them, whichever country it's in.'

'Because no confrontations ever happen unexpectedly, especially when you're sniffing around in their business!'

'We don't even have plans for us to _leave the country_ , Scorpius. All we're doing right now is putting together plans for bait to lure them out.'

'Sounds _perfectly_ safe!'

She put her hands on her hips. 'I have done this,' she said, 'not because I have any personal investment in the case, and not because I _can_ offer specialist, personal experience of Thane and his gang. Honestly, if it were up to me, I'd let Marius appoint someone from Strategy and let Harry chase after it all -'

'It _is_ up to you!'

'Except you are _already_ acting because you don't trust the proper authorities to get things done! You've already exhumed the corpse, you're already talking of bribing your way to Chicago to follow your own leads! I'm not doing this because it matters to me, I'm doing this because it matters to _you_.'

'What matters to me,' Scorpius snapped, 'is you being safe. That is _all_ that matters.'

Rose straightened and drew a slow breath. 'It's not. And you know it.'

'I -'

'I don't pretend to understand it, but I do know that Thane crawled under your skin seven years ago, and that only got worse when he brought you back. I don't know if that makes you feel guilty for helping him or like only you _get_ him enough to take him down, but I know you won't rest until this is over. I know there is _no way_ for you to see the future so long as he's out there.' She stabbed a finger at the stairwell. 'And I won't sit on the sidelines while that happens. So this is the way I know to fix it. Because at some point we have to stop believing we're a law unto ourselves.'

'We were alwaysa law unto ourselves in this.'

'And that's not how I want things tobe! That's not the future I fought for, the future I want, the future I want for our -'

'Oh, so we're doing this.' He took a step forward, glowering. 'Because I want our child to have _a_ future, so that doesn't include you endangering yourself. And then _you_ _'ll_ say something about how I need to be safe _too_ , except this kid isn't going to have a chance with…'

She stared at him as his voice trailed off. 'With what?' He worked his jaw wordlessly, and she advanced. 'With _what_ , Scorpius? With this hanging over us? Because you're right, from the way you've been acting, the way we've _both_ been acting.'

He looked away, the stench of the disinfectant tart in his throat and nostrils. 'That's not… that's not quite it.' But he felt her eyes still on him, and drew a tense breath. 'It sounds stupid to say.'

Her voice went hushed. 'With _you_ as a father? Scorpius…'

'With a murderer and associate of murderers as a father.' His gaze snapped back to her. 'I don't know how I can even _think_ about being a father with this going on, this reminder of the worst of me, the worst I've been and done. That guy - that guy who thought he was a dead man walking and thought that meant his soul didn't matter. I tried to push it back. And then I tried to go to Chicago and instead got marched into the Auror office to be reminded by Savage that what I've done will _never go away_.'

She looked stricken. 'Savage? I'll talk to Harry -'

'Who can and will do nothing, because this all comes from Director Slade, his _boss_. Or maybe you could talk to your mother and we'll _nepotism_ my way out of trouble, yet again. Because we're _different_. Except even if, _if_ you can make it go away in Britain it won't go away in America. Or Denmark - it was one of their officials I tortured and murdered, after all -'

Rose turned away. 'Stop it.'

'Stop what, reminding you what you married?' He advanced, grabbing her by the arm and turning her to face him. 'All you ever did, darling, was decide which of two people died. I decided that people died at all. Over and over. So don't _kid_ yourself; it's been a long time since I was just the joker who made your life easier -'

'I know _exactly_ who you are.' That her eyes flashed and she spat the words stopped him short. 'And none of that has ever stopped me from believing in you, from wanting to build a life with you. _Scorpius_ …' Her hand came to cover his, softening his grip, and he felt the tension turn to weakness inside him. 'I have a lot of regrets. Saving you isn't one of them. Nothingyou say is going to make _choosing_ you one of them.'

Her hands slid up his arms, across his shoulders, and he sagged with a ragged sigh to sink into her embrace, their foreheads touching. 'I wish I could just bethe joker. I don't wantto be that man. I don't want us stopped at any moment by the law remembering they can't trust me. We were meant to have a life.'

'We do,' she whispered. 'And we will again, we will soon. This is just one more fight, and you and I knowhow to fight, and we'll have the strength to get it done so long as we stand by each other. Let me dothis, Scorpius.' Rose hesitated, pulling back enough to look him in the eye. 'If you ask me to stop, I'll stop, I'll talk to Marius. But then we bothstop. We both go to ground and wait for this to blow over, and we trust Harry and all the others to sort it for us.'

Scorpius swallowed something bitter. 'You know I can't do nothing.'

'Then neither can I. And honestly, I think Marius would fire me on the spot if I brought you anywhere near this contract.' She paused, a small smile tugging at her lips. 'That doesn't mean I can't unofficially share information.'

His smile turned rueful. 'I don't want to get you into trouble.'

'Look, if you're grounded, there's still useful things you can do. Admittedly I had considered doing a lot more research on how Thane might be back, which isn't going to be your forte, but there's still a lot we don't knowabout him, about the Manticores. It won't be exciting but it'll be useful. We just need to keep talking and keep working together.'

Scorpius glanced at the metal drawer. 'And I still need to do something about this corpse I dug up.'

'It's just as well I knew you were a little weird when I married you, darling.'

The chuckle was strained, but not insincere. 'I'm sorry, Rose. I just - I thought I could handle it, but it was demeaning. Being stopped in the DIMC, surrounded by security, marched off by Savage, reminded how many people still think I'm a crook who was let off lightly. I felt shitty enough already without all of that.'

She watched him, gaze at that uncomfortable level of piercing. 'We still haven't talked about Malfoy Manor.'

'It's kind of beside the point.' He sighed. 'And kind of entirely the point. Let me put it this way: would you everwant to live there?'

Rose pursed her lips in that thoughtful way which meant this was not the first time this had occurred to her. 'Would _you_?'

'That's -'

'It's relevant. You always talked about the Malfoy name and legacy meaning nothing to you, and yet you useyour name for the Foundation so much to open doors. I knowthat on some level you're trying to make the world associate "Malfoy" with "help", not everything that came before. I know you never objected to me keeping my own name, and stillsomething in you balked at it. And I know that the question of if we're going to have a little Weasley or a little Malfoy is both just as simple as that and way more complicated.' She brought his hands with hers down to her abdomen, and he tried to not stiffen even if there was still nothing different to feel. 'I know that everything we've talked about, every reason you worry about the Manor and the Manticores alike, is about _this_. Our child. And I promise you, sweetheart, we still have all the time in the world to figure these things out.'

He swallowed a bitter taste in his mouth. 'Do you want to live in a place built and paid for by the blood of the oppressed? Where you need to either be stared at by portraits as the half-breedwife of a Malfoy, or where we need to put them all away and their absence won't be much less of a reminder? Where Lord Voldemort once held court in the dining room, where your mother was once tortured in the parlour, where your father was once imprisoned in the cellar?'

'Do you want to tear down or sell the home that's been in your family for almost a thousand years? Because if you don't, Scorpius, if you want to take it and make it something good, something new, something yours, I'll say "fetch me a decorator."'

He paused. 'A decorator?'

'Well - I mean - it's probably in need of a lick of paint.'

'Sure, but the decor wasn't the problem when I imagined you objecting to moving into a manor house where people had been murdered in the front sitting room.'

'It has more than onesitting room?' She shook her head, shook away the awed expression. 'The point is that I believe the future is what we make it, what we fight for it to be. And if you want to fight for an all-new Malfoy legacy, then I'm withyou, Scorpius. And if you want to let the Malfoy name flounder and die, then let's get to a court, Mister Weasley.'

He made a face. 'Alright, we found the line.'

Her smile was amused, but held a certain knowing air. 'See? Malfoy's _your_ name, too. And for the record, I kept my name because I like myname. Not because I don't like yours. Not because I'm embarrassed to call myself Mrs Malfoy.' She stepped closer. 'And if the name matters, there will be, and indeed _are_ , more than enough little Weasleys of the next generation. And only one you.'

'I don't think the world could take more than one me,' said Scorpius with a wry smile, slipping his arms around her.

'I know I couldn't.' She bit her lip. 'So we can figure this all out. We've got time. But we'll make there be time by ending the Manticores, ending Thane, and we'll make that happen by trusting each other and talking. And I know it's going to be hard for you on the sidelines, and I will do everythingI can to help you, and to let you help me.'

He gave a few quick nods, and kissed her on the last. 'Okay. Deal,' he murmured. 'Let's give Savage and Director Slade ulcers.'


End file.
